


within that dwelling lonely (where want and darkness reign)

by tentaclemonster



Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [46]
Category: Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Little Red Riding Hood - All Media Types
Genre: 100 Fandoms Challenge, Anthropomorphic, Bondage, Crack Werewolf Turning Methods Treated Seriously, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, F/F, F/M, Felching, Knotting, Multi, Rough Sex, Threesome - F/F/M, Werewolf Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:00:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22417357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: This is not Red’s story.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Werewolf Character(s), Original Female Character(s)/Original Werewolf Character(s)/Red Riding Hood, Original Female Character(s)/Red Riding Hood, Original Werewolf Character(s)/Red Riding Hood
Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1257083
Kudos: 228
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	within that dwelling lonely (where want and darkness reign)

**Author's Note:**

> 046/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt #86 – way.
> 
> Additional Warnings/Tags: Mentions of corporal punishment used on children, mentions of past murder, mentions of werewolves eating people, mentions of suicide (of a minor character, off-screen), implied alcoholism (of a minor character), some vomiting, and some minor blood and gore. Edging and come inflation are also kinks that are featured in this fic to varying degrees, but did not appear in enough of a capacity to warrant tagging them in the main tags.
> 
> Title from the poem “The Watcher” by Sarah Josepha Hale.

Once upon a time there was a village that sat to the left of the forest’s edge and in this village there lived a girl named Red whose mother named her such for the head of bright, scarlet curls she was born with. 

Anyone who saw Red would agree she was beautiful. How could they not, with that long hair the color of fire and eyes as green as emeralds? With her perfect teeth and flawless skin? 

But everyone knows that beauty is a temporary, fleeting thing, and so it helped that Red’s personality was just as bright as what showed on the surface. 

Red was a good girl according to all the villagers: always kind to her neighbors, always quick to offer a wide smile or a sweet word, and always helping her mother with even the most difficult or tedious of chores without a single complaint. 

She even took her grandmother who lived deep within the forest a basket of dinner every day, skipping merrily down the path that winded through the forest without a worry in her head, though even some of the adults in the village would be mighty afraid to do any such thing because they sometimes heard howls and growls coming from the forest and were terrified that some fell beast might snatch them from the road if they were on it and happened to stray too close to the thicket of trees on either side of the path and got within paw’s reach of whatever might be hiding within.

But Red was different from all those grown ups, see, because Red wasn’t afraid of anything. 

No, Red was kind and sweet and courageous. She never felt afraid when she walked the path through the woods for her mother had always told her that as long as she stayed on the path, nothing bad could happen, and Red – being the good girl that she was – trusted her mother as all good girls should. 

And perhaps, if one were being honest and Red wasn’t around to overhear, that was the one bad thing anyone  _ could _ say about Red. 

That she was a little naive, a little  _ too _ trusting. 

Red always wanted to see the best in everyone, you see, and that made her trust a little too easily where others who were a little older and a little wiser in the ways of men and beasts would not trust at all.

Of course, I don’t need to tell you any of this. 

You already know all about Red, don’t you? 

And about all that dreadful business that people say went on with her and that wolf? 

Of course you know, everyone in the village does. 

That huntsman does so love to run his mouth about things he doesn’t really know all that much about, doesn’t he? My god, if only that man would stop drinking, perhaps we could all stop hearing about how he supposedly pulled Red’s grandmother out of the wolf’s belly and then sewed the beast up with a stomach full of rocks. He doesn’t think anyone actually  _ believes _ him, does he?

Just as well that this isn’t  _ Red’s _ story, then, not really, though she does play a part in it. 

This isn’t really even the wolf’s story, either, though he shows up quite a bit, too.

No, this is the story about a different girl from a different village on the other side of the forest. 

A girl who might have had some things in common with Red other than just their shared age, but who differed from Red more than she was like her. 

See, this other girl was a little less naive than the girl you already know and maybe not quite as sweet or eye catching, and this girl, well, she wanted more from life than to just be useful to others. She wanted to be more than just a good girl, a good daughter, a good granddaughter, a good neighbor, and – someday, as Red so hoped herself – a good wife and mother.

Maybe things would have been better if she  _ were _ more like Red, if only for the sake of Red herself, but she wasn’t. 

But then again, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

All that happens to Red is how the story  _ ends _ . 

Let’s talk about how it starts. 

Let’s start with…

*

Once upon a time there was a village that sat to the right of the forest’s edge and in this village there lived a girl named Hilda. 

Unlike our lovely Red, Hilda’s name didn’t come from anything special. It was just her mother’s name and her grandmother’s name before her and probably the name of a half dozen great grandmothers as well. Other than  _ this  _ Hilda, there happened to be three other Hildas who lived in the village who were the same age as she was alone, and that didn’t even count all the Hildas who were much older or much younger than her own sixteen years.

‘Hilda’ was the name of choice for girls in the village for nearly a century running, you see, but before that I have it on good authority than ‘Lizzie’ was just as popular before ‘Hilda’ happened to dethrone it. 

If it strikes you as sad that our Hilda’s name was not particularly unique, then perhaps you may take some comfort in knowing that Hilda didn’t feel very sad about it herself. 

Anymore, I mean.

She used to, of course, back when she was a small child and wanted a name of her own that was  _ all _ her own. She would even go so far as to make up names that she knew no one else had and insist that the rest of the village start to call her by such things like Vinescent or Cloverlily. 

The rest of the village did not cooperate, obviously, for we are still calling Hilda  _ Hilda _ here in this story. 

They shooed Hilda away and told her to go play at home and leave them alone with her nonsense, and so Hilda would go home and cry about the unfairness of it all while her mother scolded her to go do her chores and her father never said anything at all for he was always outside tending to his crops and his livestock and rarely paid Hilda any attention at all when he was actually in her presence, save for when her mother told him she had misbehaved and he dispassionately but efficiently took a switch to her bottom out in the yard as punishment.

Eventually, Hilda learned to accept that her name was nothing special and that that would never change.

And eventually, Hilda figured out that her name wasn’t the only ordinary thing about her.

For, you see, while  _ Red _ was all the beauty of the sun personified and her manner was all honey and grace, Hilda was nothing like that at all. 

Hilda wasn’t ugly or anything, no. 

Most who saw her would even say she was pretty without hesitation.

But Hilda had the kind of prettiness that you only appreciated when it was right in front of you and there was nothing more beautiful around to take your attention away from it. She looked well, but her looks were not that kind that you couldn’t stop thinking about when she went away. 

She had the same dark hair as everyone else in the village and the same dark eyes and her skin, while not pox-scarred or anything else so dire, could not be called flawless as it was prone to the same sort of occasional bumps and rashes and redness that most people’s skin was prone to if they were out in the sun too long or didn’t wash their pillow often enough. 

She was of an average height for her age, not too tall or too short, and her body was slender without being what you’d call thin, lightly muscled in her arms and legs, the same sort of body all the girls in the village had if they hadn’t yet had children to fatten them up a little more, to loosen their skin and put dark circles under their eyes, and make them lose the tone of those muscles they won through hard work and chores.

Hilda had an ordinary sort of prettiness, basically, not the kind that stood out, and that kind of pretty was easily forgettable. 

Of course, this all sounds a little  _ woe is me _ , doesn’t it? 

It’s not like Hilda had the face of a troll and the body of an old oak tree, was it? 

Let’s be honest, none of what I’ve just described was a  _ bad _ thing for Hilda. 

Plenty of people would sell their very souls to be pretty even in an ordinary sort of way like Hilda was, after all. 

Maybe you’re not much of a looker yourself. 

Maybe  _ you _ would kill to be Hilda, if being Red wasn’t on the table.

Hilda could have gotten by quite fine on her looks if only she would be willing to sweeten her tongue a little to make up for whatever was lacking in them. If she would just smile a little, be a little kinder and a little more willing to listen to whatever sweet nothings the village boys wanted to whisper in her ear. None of the boys in the village would have needed their arms twisted to want to marry Hilda, if only she had a personality a little more like – well, a little more like Red.

Of course, Hilda was nothing like Red, but I’ve told you that already, haven’t I?

Because while Red had never a mean word for anyone no matter what they said or did, even if someone like a  _ saint _ would say they deserved at least a little bit of a stern talking to on occasion, and while she always smiled and rushed to do what anyone needed of her, Hilda was her exact opposite in that regard.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea here – Hilda didn’t go out of her way to be rude or difficult to anyone. Hilda would, if asked, even say that she thought herself to be quite a nice person and would be happy to be nicer if only other people were deserving of it.

Read that last sentence over again.

See, there? 

See that word?

_ Deserving _ ?

That’s the difference between Red and Hilda in a nutshell, because while Red would say that things like kindness and trust and respect and smiles and even the dinner off of her own plate and the shirt off her back were automatically deserved by anyone and everyone without question if they needed them or wanted them, Hilda thought that these were things that people needed to  _ earn _ before she would be happy to hand them over.

Hilda didn’t mind doing what her mother said, so long as she thought the order made sense, but she would say no if it didn’t or if she personally thought it was a waste of time or there was some better way of going about it.

Hilda didn’t mind doing little tasks and errands for others in the village, so long as she got something out of it – a few coins or a meal at least – to compensate her for her time and energy that might have been better spent elsewhere.

Hilda would smile back if someone smiled at her if she felt like it, but she didn’t think she was obligated to smile at anyone if she were angry or sad or sick or just not in the mood, and she never initiated the first smile because there was no one in the village she knew who made her happy enough to see them that she just had to smile at the sight of them in front of her.

Hilda might give someone her food, so long as she was already full, or her shirt, so long as she wouldn’t be cold without it, but she would never give to others what she needed for herself and would suffer without.

And if someone was rude to Hilda, well, she would be rude right back. 

Hilda was no push-over and the very idea of responding to rudeness with kindness would never occur to her, not ever, not once in her life. Hilda wasn’t afraid to raise her voice or raise her fist if the situation called for it and her motto was to do to others how they did to you – and if they did you really bad, then do them worse, so they would know not to try to get one over on you a second time.

Hilda would be nice to someone if they were nice to her, but if they weren’t then she had no problem standing her ground even if her mother told her that good girls didn’t  _ do _ that and all the other villagers seemed to agree. 

That bothered Hilda, sometimes, that it seemed like anyone could be rude to her and it would be fine but if she tried to defend herself, suddenly  _ she _ was the one with the problem. 

That the village boys could whisper filth to her, but if she smacked them around for it then she was the one who ended up filthy and stinking from being forced to muck out the horse stables. 

That the old people in the village could frown at her and tell her she acted more like a boy than a girl like it was the worst thing in the world, but if she frowned back and told them they were behaving more like bastards than elders, it would be her getting switched by her father in the back yard and trying to bite back her tears.

It was no wonder that Hilda didn’t quite feel like she belonged in her village. 

You can’t blame her for it, can you?

You must have some sympathy for Hilda, don’t you?

She was ordinary in all the ways that people cared about, but she stood out for reasons that no one thought were very good, and there were only so many times some old person could warn her that she’d never get a husband if she didn’t fix that scowl on her face before she felt like she had to get away lest she decide to fix  _ their _ faces instead.

Now, pay attention here, because this is where our story  _ actually  _ begins, because while I’ve told you all about how Red and Hilda are different, let me tell you about how they’re the same. 

Red was never afraid to go into the forest by her village because her mother told her that if she stuck to the path then she would always be fine and – because Red was such a good girl – Red trusted her mother as all good girls should.

And Hilda? 

Hilda was never afraid to go into the forest by her village, either, which was the same forest, as it turned out, that bordered Red’s village, too. 

Of course, Hilda’s lack of fear had nothing to do with any nonsense her mother told her about sticking to a path for there  _ was _ no real path that led from Hilda’s village into the forest other than a few deer trails and Hilda would not believe such an outlandish thing even if her own mother said it to her. 

No, Hilda’s lack of fear came from repeated exposure to the forest itself because Hilda was quite the hunter, you see, and often came into the forest alone to hunt deer and rabbits with her bow and knife or to fish by the brook that ran through the forest with her makeshift pole – both to her mother’s great despair because hunting and fishing were not an activities that good girls participated in, though no amount of switchings from her father could dissuade Hilda from this and eventually her mother and father both gave up on trying to deter her.

Let her do what she will, they seemed to think, for she will do it whether we let her or not. 

If Hilda were eaten by a bear, they would not be surprised. Perhaps they would not even mourn. Perhaps they might just think it was inevitable and move on with their lives. Perhaps they might even be happy if Hilda were gone, so that she would no longer be a disruption or a source of confusion and frustration.

You might be quite depressed if your parents just gave up on you like that, even if you don’t really get on with them, but Hilda was entirely relieved and happy to just be left alone with minimum amount of fuss over her going on that might keep her away from what she wanted to do.

Escaping to the forest was always the highlight of her day and she basked in the solitude she found there, often finding herself wishing she could stay in the forest forever, wishing she could build a little house by the brook big enough for just her and never return to the village again.

And if occasionally Hilda felt alone, if she sometimes felt lone _ ly _ – well, it was better than staying in the village at any rate. It was better than being around her mother who obviously preferred her other children to Hilda, better than being near her father who treated her like less than a stranger, and better than being around her siblings and the other village children who didn’t quite understand Hilda much less like her.

Better no company than bad company, was what Hilda often thought when those pangs of lonesomeness distracted her from her fun.

Hilda, then, was used to the forest in ways Red was not but all the same, she had as little fear about being in the forest as Red had walking along her path, for one can hardly be afraid of a place they spent so much time in, can they?

You might feel the need to think about that a little more closely, about this thing Hilda and Red had in common, and wonder if perhaps things might have been different if only Hilda and Red met  _ first _ . 

If perhaps Hilda might have wandered west in the forest and come across the path Red took every day on her own.

If perhaps Hilda and Red might have met and spoke and if perhaps they might have become friends.

It’s not such a strange possibility, is it? Hilda was a little sharp around the edges, sure, but she was nice to those who were nice to her and Red was always, always nice. I think Hilda might have liked Red, myself, if only things were different, and Red never disliked anyone so she would surely have been able to see the good qualities in Hilda the way no one else ever would.

If you are a romantic sort, you might even call that the beginning of a love story. No, think about it – two girls from opposite villages with but just a forest between them, one dark and sharp and the other as bright as fire and as sweet as sugar crystals melting on your tongue, meeting by happenstance because our brave young Hilda decided to traverse the forest on her own and see what was on the other side.

Maybe, if you are particularly daring, you would like to imagine Hilda leading Red away from the path and showing her all the wonders of the forest she so dearly loved, making Red love them just as she did, building in Red a love so big for the forest and Hilda both that she might forgive herself for breaking her promise to her mother to always, always stay on the path and never venture out into the forest itself.

And maybe you’re a wistful romantic in addition to a daring one. Are you? You like happy endings, don’t you? Maybe now you’d like to imagine that nice little house Hilda dreamed of building by the brook, big enough not just for one but for two. Do you like children in your love stories? No? How about cats? Well, I’m sure Hilda might add some space for those, too, in her little house by the brook if you think she and Red might want them someday.

Yes, maybe if Hilda had met Red first, you would be hearing a very different story and that wild tale the huntsman so liked to weave at the pub in Red’s village about evil wolves who swallowed grandmothers whole after getting a few drinks in him would be more salacious than bloody. 

Of course, Hilda  _ didn’t _ meet Red first.

She met the wolf.

But, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself again.

As I was saying...

*

Hilda spent most of her days in the forest, leaving the village after rushing through whatever chores her mother wanted her to do in the morning so that she would not give the woman any reason to make Hilda stay longer than she would have liked and no reason to have Hilda’s father take out his switch upon Hilda’s hide when she returned home for not doing her share of the work in a house that she really only spent the nights in.

On most days, Hilda passed her time in the forest the same way. 

She fished or she hunted, cooking her meat over a small fire she built herself, or – if it were too hot to cook – she would pick berries from the bushes in the forest or other fruit from the trees and eat them right from her hand. 

Hilda had a favorite tree, not a fruit tree but a pine, that was right by the brook that she loved to sit under and fish or read or use her knife to carve little figures out of large branches she found strewn on the ground. Occasionally, Hilda would get tired and sleep, too, right there with the scent of pine clinging to her clothes and the needles tangling in her hair.

On the day that Hilda’s life would change forever, she was sitting under this very tree reading a book she had borrowed from an old man who lived in her village, one of the few villagers Hilda actually liked for he never had a snide thing to say to her or a mean look to send her and all their conversations revolved around the books she borrowed from his library, the biggest one in the village and the only place in it Hilda thought was worth the wood it took to build it.

Hilda was not aware, at first, that she was not alone but when she heard the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, she found herself startled into dropping her book, her head jerking as she looked up at who approached her – and then she inhaled sharply, her eyes going wide.

For the creature who had approached Hilda was no human being at all, nor even a deer coming to the brook for a drink like Hilda might have thought. 

It had the  _ shape _ of a human, of sorts, in that it had a head on top of a neck that lowered to a chest and it was standing upright on two legs. It had two arms as muscled as any man in her village and its legs were just as muscled and long as that of any human man, and between those legs it – no,  _ he _ , Hilda realized with a flush of heat creeping up her neck – had a long, thick cock that laid softly against his thigh.

But where all the shapes were almost right, all the rest was wrong.

Because this creature’s head was not that of a human head at all, but that of a wolf, with a wolf’s pointed ears that swiveled around and a wolf’s sharp snout in place of a human nose and a wolf’s eyes that could never be mistaken for human eyes even if they had been on a human face. 

There was not a hint of human skin on the creature’s head, either, or any of the  _ rest _ of it for this wolf man had thick black fur everywhere from its ears that moved to its chest and its limbs and down to the cock and balls between its legs. 

And those legs – and those arms – while almost human in shape ended not in human hands and feet, but in paws. 

Large paws, larger than even the biggest bear tracks Hilda had ever seen, that ended in claws so sharp they looked like they could cut glass without even trying. Paws so big that Hilda imagined that if she were hit by one of them, the force would break her neck instantly.

Hilda swallowed hard as she looked at the creature, her throat so tight that swallowing hurt. Her heartbeat pounded, skipped, and did a fearful jig in her chest, and her breathing was so quick that she had to force herself to slow down to make the stars that were dancing in her vision go away back to whatever space they came from.

Hilda spared a thought to whether she might be dreaming an odd, frightening little dream that she would wake up from at any moment, but Hilda knew even as she thought it that this was no dream at all. 

That she was awake and the creature in front of her was as real as she was.

Hilda, for the first time, felt afraid in this forest that was her sanctuary. 

She suddenly wanted to get up and run screaming to her mother, an impulse she hadn’t had since she was a little girl and that she hated herself for having now. 

She wished desperately that her father was here to protect her from this beast, a wish that she hated herself even more for making for what use had her father ever been to her other than to give her welts upon her backside for behavior that wasn’t even wrong and that he wasn’t even around to know anything about anyway? 

Hilda felt like a coward all of a sudden and she did not like that feeling. She did not like it one bit.

And that made Hilda angry. 

A much more pleasant emotion, that. 

One that Hilda was much more used to than fear.

She felt angry that this wolf creature had intruded upon her solitude, that he had made her afraid, that his very presence had ruined the safe feeling of this forest for her. 

She felt  _ so _ angry and Hilda had never been one to keep quiet about her anger.

“Well, what do you want?” she snapped at the wolf, her voice shrill. Her heart quickened in her chest and she told herself it wasn’t fear, no no no, not fear, it was anger that she felt and that was all it was. “Can’t you see I’m busy here?”

The wolf titled its head much like a normal wolf would and his ears twitched on his head, one of them going askew in a way that might be cute on a dog but which was just strange on this…. _ thing _ .

Hilda did not know what kind of reaction she expected from the wolf – for it to attack her or run away or whatever else – but in no way did she actually expect it to  _ speak _ . 

The thought that such a creature  _ could _ speak did not even occur to her until it did, and then Hilda felt such a sense of shock that she thought she might wet herself from the force of it.

“What do I want?” the wolf asked, his voice deep and rough like a human man of an age with Hilda’s father might be but with a growl in it than no human vocal cords could ever make no matter how they tried. “Human girl, you are in my forest. It should be I asking you what it is you are doing here.”

Hilda stared at the wolf, her heart beating so quickly that at any other time she might be terrified for the sake of her health, but now she was too surprised to be terrified of anything but perhaps the creature in front of her.

But, no, Hilda was too surprised by the fact that he had  _ spoke _ to be afraid of even him now, though she did note in a very small, distant sort of way that he had  _ incredibly _ sharp teeth.

“Your forest?” she asked, incredulous. “I’ve been coming here every day for years and I’ve never once seen you or any like you, and yet you claim this forest is yours?”

“It is a large forest and I cannot spend all my time in just one part of it,” the wolf said, calmly, “but it is all my forest nonetheless as I was made here many years ago and have claimed it as my territory ever since, just as my elder wolf did before me, and so you are a trespasser here. That you have only just learned of your trespass does not make it any less a crime and it does not make you any less deserving of a trespasser’s punishment.”

“ _ Punishment? _ ” Hilda exclaimed, her mind racing. She did not know what this wolf might consider a fitting punishment to be, but – oh, now Hilda was thinking of his  _ teeth _ again, and her heart was going to burst out of her chest if it beat any faster. She scrambled, rushing to say, “But – but I’ve never even bothered you! Not once! And – and I  _ love _ this forest! I’ve never hurt anything here!”

“No? Do you not kill the fish in the stream that would be my dinner or the deer that might be my dessert? Do you not eat the fruit that may flavor my fish and fatten my deer so that my meal will be one to savor when the time to hunt them comes? Have you not walked this forest, disturbing the very leaves that have fallen on the ground and the branches that have come loose from the trees, so often that evidence of your every step is everywhere to be found? So that the very smell of you is ingrained into these woods as much as that of the pine is?”

Hilda could deny none of it as she knew that everything the wolf said was true.

Still, though – 

“But it isn’t fair,” she said fiercely, “to punish someone for a crime they didn’t know they were committing. Surely there must be some – some  _ provision _ in whatever laws you have about that?”

“There are no laws,” said the wolf, “but that one law which says the elder wolf owns the forest and has the right to decide what to do with all the creatures in it.”

“So you don’t have to punish me, then!” she argued. “You just said it yourself that the choice is yours. Why punish me when you might let me go?”

“Why let you go,” the wolf countered, “when I might punish you instead?”

Hilda stared up at the wolf feeling desperate. Her palms felt slick with sweat where they were held limply in her lap. She wished horribly that she could stand, so that she did not feel that the wolf was towering over her so, but her legs felt so weak that she thought she might not be able to stand at all.

“ _ Surely, _ ” she started, “surely there must be something that I can do that will convince you to let me go?”

The wolf peered down at her, his ears flicking as though he were thinking deeply on something. “Will you agree to leave this forest and never return?”

Hilda opened her mouth and felt the words dying on her tongue before they even fully formed.

If she left the forest and never came back, she would be stuck in the village forever.

Her stomach turned at the very idea of it. The thought of spending day in and day out there, with those people, with the boys who said nasty things to her and the old folks who scowled at her for not taking it all with a smile and her parents who knew her not at all, made her feel nauseous to even contemplate. 

The little time she spent there at night to sleep and in the mornings to do chores was bad enough, but to have no forest to escape to for the day between morning and night – 

Hilda felt that being  _ eaten _ would be a better fate than that.

Something of her feeling must have shown on her face, for the wolf let out a hoarse, huffing sort of noise that made Hilda flinch and took her more than a few seconds to realize was his version of a  _ laugh _ .

“Do you love my forest so much, human girl, that you would accept my punishment for your trespassing rather than agree to simply leave and never see it again?” he asked her, something like curiosity in that deep voice of his.

“Yes,” Hilda replied faintly, for that was the truth. God help her, whatever this wolf wanted to do to her for speaking it, but it was the truth. “Yes, I – I am sorry for trespassing, but I have only come here because – well, because this forest is more a home to me than the home I was raised in is. It would kill me to leave and never come back.”

“It may kill you to stay,” the wolf said, his voice only matter of fact, without any menace or malice behind his words.

Hilda swallowed down her nerves. She raised her chin and said confidently, “Then so be it. It would be better to die here and now than to leave and be forced to know nothing but my village for the rest of my life. Whatever you may do to me, wolf, I promise you could not be crueler than that.”

Hilda wanted nothing more than to shut her eyes, so that if the wolf killed her she might not have to see it coming, but she forced herself to keep looking up at him. She would not be a coward in her last moments, she swore. She would face her end with dignity, however the wolf decided to do it.

But the seconds ticked by and still nothing happened. 

The wolf did not raise one of his giant paws to break her neck with.

He did not kneel down and show Hilda his great, sharp teeth, and take a bite from her with them.

He only continued to look down at her, as though he were considering her and weighing her words for their sincerity, and finally when he moved it was not to strike Hilda down, but to stretch his teeth out into a wolfish smile and to nod his head to her, as if in approval.

“I may have some use for you after all, human girl,” the wolf said. He raised a paw to his face and tapped his chin with one claw of it, such a human gesture that Hilda blinked in surprise at seeing it. “Do you dislike living among your own kind so much? Truly?”

“ _ Yes, _ ” Hilda answered strongly, nodding. “If I could live in this forest forever...oh, I would love nothing more, I swear to you.”

“And what if I would allow that?” the wolf asked. “If I told you that you could live here for all your days, that I knew of a house in these woods that has been abandoned for many years that you may move into this very day? What would you say to that?”

“ _ Oh _ , I –“ Hilda stopped herself, the smile that was forming on her face at what the wolf was proposing slipping away as she looked up at the wolf and the way he peered so searchingly down at her. 

So  _ hungrily _ down at her.

Her throat felt very dry all of a sudden, and Hilda remembered that no kindness she’d ever received in life had ever been free. Even people who smiled at her always wanted a smile in return, and acted like she’d stolen their coin purse right off their belt if she didn’t give it to them.

“What’s the catch?” she asked suddenly.

The wolf’s ears both swiveled forward at once, like she’d caught him by surprise. “The catch?”

“Do you expect me to believe that you’ll let me live in your forest out of the kindness of your heart?” Hilda demanded. “When just a few minutes ago you were calling me a trespasser and that I needed to be punished for being here? You said you might have a  _ use _ for me, so there must be something you want in return for what you’re offering, isn’t there?”

“Ah, the  _ catch _ ,” the wolf said, nodding in understanding. “You are right that there is something I want from you for allowing you to live my forest.”

“Then...what is it that you want in return?”

“I cannot allow a human to live in my forest,” the wolf said gravely.

Hilda felt confusion rush through her. “But –“

“And so,” the wolf continued, as though Hilda had not interrupted at all, “if you are to live in my forest, you can no longer be human.”

Hilda’s confusion was no more alleviated by that explanation than it would have been by the wind blowing through the trees.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“There is a way to make you like I am,” the wolf explained. “I was a human like you a very long time ago, you see. Another wolf lived in this forest then and I, just a human boy who wanted to escape his own village much like you do yours, trespassed as well. It is custom for the elder wolf of a forest to eventually make a new wolf and teach them all they need to know so they may take care of the forest one day themselves when the elder is gone. This wolf saw something in me and offered me a choice as I am offering you – face punishment for your trespassing or agree to be turned. Live out your days in the forest as a wolf. Let me teach you and some day, when I am gone, take this forest as your own.”

“And you accepted.”

“ _ Yes _ ,” the wolf said, the word heavy with satisfaction, “and I have been given little cause to regret that acceptance in the time since I gave it.”

Hilda was quiet. 

Her whole chest felt tight at what the wolf was proposing. 

She’d heard of such things before in old folktales she’d read, stories about people who were bitten by wolves and then turned into wolves themselves at every full moon. 

Of course, none of those stories had described a wolf quite like the one in front of her, who walked like a person and  _ talked _ like a person but who looked so entirely wolf-like in every way that mattered, and none of those stories ever mentioned the wolf  _ asking _ to change someone. They all made it seem like it was something random that happened, that these men who turned into wolves had no control when they were in their wolf form and would attack a person as readily as any other dangerous animal would, without thought or hesitation.

This wolf did not act like a wild animal, however. He did not act like a human being, but neither was he a mindless beast. 

If he attacked her, Hilda thought, it would be a decision he made with all of his thought behind it.

Hilda thought that he was offering her wasn’t something he was offering lightly, either. It couldn’t have been, not with how serious he seemed about it, as though he were handing her the most precious gift in the world which clearly, in his mind, was exactly what he was doing. 

Hilda couldn’t say she felt any differently, either, for she wanted nothing more than to live in this forest, to make it her home, to never have to return to her village again. There was really only one thing holding her back from accepting, and such a vain thing it was, especially for Hilda who knew she had no reason to be vain. 

“Will I look like you?” she asked the wolf. “When you – when you change me? Will I be all --” 

Hilda’s words trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish the sentence without being insulting.

The wolf’s ears twitched as he tried to parse her meaning and then – then there was that huffing noise again, that  _ laugh _ . He was  _ laughing _ at her for being worried that she might look like some human/beast hybrid.

Hilda felt herself flushing, embarrassed at herself and her own weakness heating up her face.

The wolf answered, still chuffing a little, clearly amused, “No, human girl. It takes a very long time for a human who has been changed to be able to take on this form. After you are changed, you will be able to turn into a wolf on the nights of the full moon, but on every other night you will look as you are now. In time, you may learn to change on other days without the moon’s help, but you will not be able to look like me until you are the elder wolf yourself, and then, only if you choose to, and that is a very long way off yet.”

Hilda was relieved to hear it and then disliked that she was relieved. Something the wolf said pricked at her curiosity, though, made her ask, “Does that mean you can look like a human if you want to?”

She regretted asking the second she saw the wolf’s reaction to the question. His amusement dried up in an instant and he looked suddenly severe, his ears flattening against his head for a moment before they righted themselves.

“I have no interest in looking human. I have not had an interest in such folly in years.”

The wolf didn’t need to demand that Hilda drop the subject for the demand was obvious in every word he spoke – as was the warning for what would happen if she didn’t comply.

Hilda swallowed hard, her heartbeat picking up again though it had been calmed for some minutes while they were speaking.

“I understand,” she said faintly, though she did not understand at all.

The wolf nodded once, stiffly, and seemed to accept her answer. 

Hilda was relieved, even though she was still curious about it all, wondering what this wolf might look like were he a man. She couldn’t picture it easily. His body was simple enough to imagine, but his face? Not at all.

Hilda thought with the way he reacted, she would likely never find out, either.

“I put the choice to you, then,” the wolf said. “Would you like to live in my forest forever? Become a wolf much like I am a wolf and claim my forest for your own as I have, to have it for you alone when I one day pass from this world?”

It was not a difficult choice to make, really.

It was not difficult at all.

“Yes,” Hilda said, and felt nothing but relief at the word and a sense of joy the likes of which she had hardly ever known. “There’s nothing I want more in the world.”

*

Hilda returned to her village one last time at the wolf’s suggestion.

“Gather whatever things you need that you cannot live without,” the wolf told her, “and say goodbye to those who might miss you so that they do not come looking for you, thinking you are missing. Tell them whatever lie will make them happy and when you come back, I will be waiting to show you to your new home.”

Hilda almost didn’t want to do as he said, some part of her worried that if she left the forest even once now that she would never be able to make her way back to it again, but she knew that such worry was silly and there was sense in the wolf’s suggestion. 

There were things Hilda needed, after all, like clothes – which the wolf might be able to live without but that she certainly couldn’t – and books and perhaps some of the vegetable seeds her mother saved for planting season, for wherever this house the wolf promised her was, Hilda had a mind to start her own garden there when it came time to plant.

Suddenly Hilda had a mind to do a great many things, actually, so many plans for her new life.

Hilda went back to the village, a smile on her face for once, such an alarming sight that the villagers couldn’t help but comment on it, and so great was Hilda’s joy that she didn’t even mind.

“What has you so happy today, Miss Sourpuss?” one of the village boys who always bothered her demanded as she went by.

“I’m leaving the village,” Hilda told him, happily. Thinking on the wolf’s advice to tell them all a story that they’d believe, she added, “There’s a man whose been courting me the next village over. I’m going there and we’re going to get married. None of you lot will ever see me again!”

“Well,” the boy said, his mouth hanging open in surprise, at a loss for words. “Well….”

If he ever found something to say, Hilda never found out. She laughed with delight and left him standing there catching flies and made her way to her family’s home. 

There was no one there when she arrived and Hilda was confused for a moment before she remembered that it was shopping day. Her father always took her mother and siblings a few villages over in their wagon to buy supplies once a month, always on the third. 

It used to be Hilda’s favorite day when she was little. The one thing she looked forward to and the only time she liked being around her family, for in another village it was easy to pretend she was someone else, someone... _ happy _ , but as of late she’d been skipping shopping day to be in the forest instead.

She was happier there, after all. More happy than any village could have made her.

Hilda knew from experience that her family would stay in that village overnight with her mother’s sister who lived there and they would not return until the next morning. Her heart panged at the thought of not seeing them to say goodbye in person, not seeing them all one last time no matter what their differences were or how she longed to leave them, but at the same time she also felt relieved. 

It would be harder if they were here, she thought. 

Her mother, though she and Hilda weren’t what you’d call close, might try to stop Hilda as she’d always tried to stop Hilda from doing things she didn’t approve of if she were here to see Hilda leave. Hilda couldn’t imagine how her father would react, she knew him so little, but she thought he would follow her mother’s lead in this as he did everything else, and while her mother could hardly stop her from leaving, her father was big and strong and had the law behind him. 

He could hold Hilda hostage if he wanted and there would be nothing Hilda could do to escape. If a father wanted his daughter to stay home, she couldn’t leave. She married who he said, left when he said, did what he said. That was the law, unfair as it was, and Hilda would be beholden to it if she had to stay in this village under her father’s roof.

Hilda swallowed nervously just thinking about it. 

No, she thought. This was easier. 

Now she could pack in peace and be gone before they knew it.

Hilda steeled herself, making a mental list of all she needed, and then she set about gathering it up. 

There was trunk her father owned, passed down from his own father, a huge thing with wheels on it that could easily be pulled along no matter how much weight was in it. It that had nothing stored in it currently but quilts they only pulled out once winter really started, the thing gathering dust at the foot of her parents’ bed for the rest of the year. 

Hilda felt bad for taking the thing, for even going into her parents’ room without permission to get it, but she reasoned with herself that she needed the trunk more than the rest of the family did, and so she emptied it out – putting the quilts aside carefully on the floor – and went around the house packing what she wanted to take.

She started in her own room first, the one she shared with her sisters. 

Hilda packed up all her clothes, from her spring dresses to her winter sweaters alike and all of her boots, though she left the softer, frillier shoes she never wore much anyway for she didn’t think they’d last long in the forest and didn’t want to waste any space in the trunk on them. She packed her favorite books, her knitting needles and a few balls of woolen yarn, a small mirror (which she wrapped in a sweater so it wouldn’t break), the quilt her mother had made her on her tenth birthday that always kept her warm, and even the small bag of coins she’d been saving that she’d hidden under her mattress – hoping a little that she might walk to another village that bordered the woods and buy things sometimes, after she got a handle on the whole being a wolf thing.

It didn’t take Hilda long to get everything she could call hers and by the time she was done, there was no trace of her left in the room at all. Just an empty bed, stripped of its quilt, and an empty void of space on a dresser’s top that was surrounded by her sisters’ cluttered belongings.

It made Hilda uncomfortable to look at it, at the absence of her in the room she had grown up in and just how quickly it took to take all the traces of herself out, so she left the room with a heavy heart, trunk rolling along behind her.

There was little else she needed from the rest of the house, for all of her own things were in her room and not much else in the house was hers, but Hilda did take some things.

Hilda took the seeds she wanted for the garden she planned – tomato and squash and potato, and some marigold, too, that would look pretty and that she could eat, all of them in their own little individual vials – and a small cast iron pot from the kitchen along with a set of fork, knife, and spoon, for she didn’t know if the house the wolf promised her would have cooking things already. From her father’s things, Hilda took a flint that she might easily make fires from and she took the small bow of his she always used to hunt. She also got the fishing pole she’d made herself that always sat in the corner of the main room, and a ball of twine of her father’s that he used for his own pole, in case she needed it.

Hilda looked around again, searching, as though there was something she had missed, something more she might want to take, and she deflated when she realized there was nothing else she needed here, that her trunk was full of all that she would require and there was nothing left for her in this place.

She felt horribly nostalgic then – horribly,  _ strangely _ nostalgic – for this house that she had never quite liked, for even though she had no real love for it, she did have plenty of memories and that meant...something. 

It was not enough to make her stay, to change her mind, no, but there was a sense of loss in Hilda – small as it might be – at leaving it all behind to never see it again, and that loss stung with all the small, bitter sharpness of a scab that had had been scratched off a patch of cut skin that thought itself to be on the way to healing.

Hilda thought about not getting to say goodbye to her family again and she hesitated for a moment before she made her way over to her mother’s desk where the woman always wrote her letters to friends and family in other villages, thank you notes and holiday cards and the like.

Hilda pulled out her mother’s chair and slowly lowered herself in it, feeling about like she was a child sticking her hand in the cookie jar by entering her mother’s most personal space when the woman wasn’t around. She reached out across the desk and pulled out a piece of stationary, the fancy kind her mother bought special on her birthday every year, and picked up a pen. 

Hilda thought hard about what she wanted to say and then she put the pen down and wrote in her script that her mother had always told her was too cramped for the way a young girl should write – 

_ Mother,  _

_ By now you’ve probably already heard that I’ve left the village. You should know that this is true and that I don’t plan on ever coming back. I’ve been courting with a man for awhile now who wants to marry me and I’ve gone to do this. He is a good man who can provide for me well and I will be living with him from now on as his wife in another village, though I will not tell you which one as I don’t wish for you to send father to come to take me home.  _

_ Believe me when I tell you that I’m sorry that I’ve been deceitful in this and I truly did not plan to leave on the day that you would all be gone. I regret that I cannot see you just one last time in person and if this hurts you, too, then please know that I never wanted you to be hurt.  _

_ Mother, I think we both know that I have not been very happy here for awhile now. Maybe I will never be happy, as you have so often warned me, but I truly believe that I will be happy where I’m going. I am starting a new life in a new place and I have nothing but hope about how the future will unfold. If you are angry with me for leaving or for how I am leaving, then at least try to be happy for me, or forgive me, at least, for doing what I must in order to achieve my own happiness.  _

_ I hope that my leaving will be a relief for you and father. You no longer need to worry for me or frustrate yourselves by trying to get me to behave. Be happy about this for yourselves, if not for me, please. _

_ Please also tell father that I have taken his rolling trunk to pack my things in as well as a small bow, a flint, and some of his fishing twine with me, and I have also taken a single pot, some utensils, and a few seeds from the kitchen, as mementos for my new home. I hope you do not begrudge me for taking these few things, but if you do, please forgive me. Please also forgive me for using this stationary of yours, mother, for I know how expensive it is and how much you treasure it. I hope my goodbye will be worth the paper it is printed on to you, and that you find it heartfelt rather than something to greet with scorn. _

_ I wish things could have been different. Believe me, please. I wish I could have been the daughter you wanted and I’m sorry I wasn’t. _

_ Give my love to father and all the rest. If I have left anything of mine behind, tell my sisters they may have it. _

_ I do love you, mother, even if you might think I don’t. We’ve had our differences, but maybe I should have said it more. I’m sorry that I can’t remember the last time I did. _

_ With the warmest of regards, _

_ Hilda _

_ Your eldest daughter _

_ * _

Hilda roughly wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, annoyed at them and at herself for spilling them, sniffling as she laid down the pen. She picked the letter she had written up and brought it to the kitchen table. She put it down carefully, as though it were the most fragile of relics, and laid it down right where she knew they would see it.

She looked around the house one last time, feeling the echoes of years spent within these walls buzzing along her skin like bees. Though Hilda felt a pang of emotion at the thought that this would be her last look at the place, mostly what she felt was elation about going back to the forest and not having to leave ever again unless she decided to.

She hoped the house the wolf told her about was a good one, that it at least had strong walls and a good roof. Everything else could be fixed, new things could be made or bought, new memories could be made, but let it at least have as good a foundation as this house did so that she might build upon it something that was in her own image, not that of her family.

Hilda spared a moment to go into the kitchen to splash some water on her face and to dry it off on a towel and then took a deep breath, feeling as though she were closing a door behind her as she exhaled. 

She took her trunk by the handle and finally, she left the house.

News traveled fast in the village, for all along the way, people stopped Hilda to ask her about her upcoming marriage.

To all of them, she said the same things, spinning some great tale of secret courting and a good man who lived some ways away and her plans for the fictional wedding she would never have. She gave them a name for this man she would marry, a first one that was as common around these parts as ‘Hilda’ was but no last, and gave a description of black hair and brown eyes and a nice smile that would paint a vague picture that would look like most of the men in this village and dozens in the villages beyond. She told them he was kind and sweet and good to her, all wonderful qualities in a suitor, of course, but not qualities as personally identifiable as a birthmark or a scar would be.

The only detail she changed, every time, was the name of the village she was moving to, for Hilda knew all that she said would be repeated to her family as soon as they returned and she thought it best if they were as confused about where she was going as possible. 

Her mother might send her father to go to one village to bring Hilda back, but Hilda knew they would never go on such a wild goose chase all over the countryside hoping to find her. Hilda was not deluded enough to think they cared so much or would think her worth the effort of going to every village she mentioned to people, especially not after reading her letter and hearing what she told people and knowing that she had confused things on purpose to dissuade them from that very act. 

Hilda kept to the main road leading out of the village for awhile, waving to people and smiling as she went, letting them think she was keeping to the road and telling them when they asked that her fiance had sent a carriage to pick her up a bit up the way near the designated rest area.

Only once Hilda was out of the village limits and there was no one around to see her did she cut across the road and into the forest, dragging her trunk along behind her.

*

Wheels made Hilda’s trunk easy to haul across her family’s house and the village’s paved road, but the forest was something else entirely. 

With the forest floor littered with leaves and branches and all sorts of other things as it was, the wheels may as well not been there at all for how difficult it became to drag the trunk behind her, and the deeper Hilda got into the forest, the more muscles she had to exert to keep moving the trunk along.

Over half an hour of this went by, to the point that Hilda was breathing heavily and had worked up a sweat, when the wolf finally showed up again.

It was as though one minute there was nothing but trees in front of her and the next, there was the wolf, appearing out of nowhere and laughing softly at her.

Hilda jumped at seeing him and then scowled as her heartbeat got back under control.

“Do you need help with that?” he asked, sounding far more amused at Hilda’s plight than she thought any wolf man had any right to be.

Still, Hilda was not going to insist that she keep hauling the thing herself. Her shoulders already ached from carrying it this far.

“If you’d please,” she answered breathily, still exerted. She wished mightily that she’d had a mind to take a water skin with her when she was packing, so that she might have a drink to cool herself down with.

The wolf took the handle of the trunk from her and lifted it over his shoulder effortlessly, looking as though it weighed little more than a sack of air. 

Hilda couldn’t help but be impressed. Even the strongest men of her village would at least wince at lifting a trunk such as that. She only hoped that when he changed her into a wolf herself, she might have some of that strength, too. It would certainly be useful.

“Come,” the wolf said, “the house is further in. We will get there before sunset if we hurry.” 

He walked away, expecting Hilda to follow, and Hilda hurried to catch up, making a point of walking beside him.

The forest was quiet as it always was with nothing but the calls of birds and the sound of leaves crunching beneath their feet keeping it from being totally silent. 

Hilda had always enjoyed the quiet before, taking a sense of peace from it, but oddly now that someone was with her it all seemed so loud. She had to resist the urge to fidget with her hands and her eyes kept darting to the wolf walking next to her and away again, a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue for him and her mind scrambling to think of which to ask first.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a question she asked first at all. 

Suddenly she just found herself saying, “My name is Hilda, by the way. I realized I didn’t tell you before, but...well, that’s my name.”

The wolf glanced side-long at her and his ears quivered oddly on his head. 

Hilda realized then that she wished she’d paid more attention to the dogs in her village growing up. Those ears seemed to show the wolf’s emotions how a human’s face showed theirs, but Hilda hadn’t a clue how to really read them.

Pity she’d always been a cat person, or else she might be able to know what the wolf was thinking as easily as reading a book.

“Hilda,” the wolf repeated, as though tasting the name in his mouth. “It is...odd.”

Hilda blinked at him, wondering if she should be bothered by that. She had never liked the name much herself, sure, but she’d never thought it was  _ odd _ before. Hopelessly boring, maybe, but – 

“It’s a popular name in my village,” she said, feeling the need to explain for some reason. “My mother’s name is Hilda and so was my grandmother’s. There are three other girls my age named Hilda alone. It’s like every other girl born has been named Hilda for the last hundred years.”

“Ah, I see. When I was human, Elizabeth was such a name. There were a dozen or more in the village and all of them tried to get a nickname out of it that was all their own. They fought as fiercely over the diminutive ‘Liz’ as any men have ever fought a war. It became violent at times, even. Tch. Such energy wasted on foolishness. Has human life changed much since then?”

Considering that Hilda had known two of the other Hildas in her village to argue quite angrily over who was allowed to be called ‘Hil’ on numerous occasions, she answered honestly, “No, not very much.”

The wolf made a small sound as though he hadn’t expected anything less.

Curious, Hilda asked tentatively, “I don’t suppose  _ you _ have a name you’d like to share?”

The wolf shot her a milder version of the look he’d given her when she asked if he could turn into a human and Hilda rushed to explain, “It’s only that I’ve been thinking of you as ‘the wolf’ in my head and it’s...well, it’s not really a name, is it? It’s like if you just kept calling me ‘the human girl’. I wouldn’t like it if you did that when I have a perfectly... _ serviceable _ name already.”

The look subsided and faded into something more amused. 

“The wolf is as good a name as any,” the wolf said, “for it is what I am more than I ever was any name I had when I was human. Drop the first part of it and just call me ‘wolf’ if it makes you feel better, but it is of no concern to me.”

Hilda’s curiosity felt as though it had a bucket of cold water thrown on it and she pursed her lips, slightly annoyed at being put off.

The wolf – who, apparently, would forever be known to her  _ as _ ‘the wolf’ – had issues when it came to talking about anything having to do with his time before he’d been changed, that much was clear. 

Hilda couldn’t help but want to know why that was, but she realized that it would be a bad idea to push the issue if the way he’d reacted so far had been any indication. 

The last thing she wanted was to make the wolf angry, for she knew she stood no chance of defending herself if she did.

Still, she couldn’t help but press a little, “Will you at least tell me how old you are?”

The wolf made that laughing noise of his again and said, “Much older than you, young Hilda, and older than any human could ever hope to be. Hush now with your questions, child, we’re here.”

He stopped and Hilda, startled, stopped too, blinking up at the house that had seemingly popped up out of nowhere much like the wolf had before.

It stood in a small clearing in the forest, this house, with grassy land all around it where trees had long ago been cut away. It was a small building, big enough for perhaps one person or two to live in, made of large wooden logs so dark brown they were almost black and a red-painted tin roof on top with a brick chimney peeking out from behind it. A red wooden door was in the center of the front wall with a window on either side of it, white curtains that hanged inside the house blocking the inside from view. There was a medium sized porch stretching out of the front where an old rocking chair sat by one window and a stack of wood rested under the other.

It was lovely, Hilda thought. If someone had taken the picture of the house she’d always wanted from her mind, this one would only need a little fence running around it and a garden off to the side to be perfect. 

It also didn’t look in nearly enough disrepair to be abandoned as the wolf said it was. 

“I thought you said this house was abandoned,” she voiced the thought aloud. 

The wolf made a small, thoughtful noise, and continued walking towards the house while Hilda tentatively followed behind him, half afraid someone would pop out of the door any moment and ask what they were doing in whoever it was’s yard.

“It  _ was _ abandoned,” the wolf said, “until I moved in.”

Hilda stopped walking again, surprised, and stared after the wolf’s retreating back. 

“ _ What _ ?” she asked, then scrambled to follow him. “You never said you were moving me into a house you lived in!”

“What difference does it make?” the wolf asked, sounding infinitely patient and calm. He reached the porch and carefully sat her trunk down near the stack of wood, then turned to her and tilted his head at her quizzically. “You would leave the only home you have ever known so that I may change you to be like me, the only two of our kind in this forest, and yet such a small intimacy as sharing a roof with me has you flustered?”

“I’m not flustered!” Hilda denied, though truthfully she  _ did _ feel quite flustered at the word ‘intimacy’ coming out of the wolf’s mouth, and felt heat creeping up her neck at the sound of it, to her own horror and surprise. “It’s just...in my village, girls don’t live with men other than their family members until they move out to get married.”

“What we will share between us as wolves will be deeper and more worthwhile than any marriage,” the wolf replied, uncaring or unwilling to comment on how Hilda’s cheeks burned at his words, “but you would do well to remember that I am not a man and you will not be a girl for much longer. I am a wolf and so you will be, too, after you are changed. The trappings of human society no longer apply to you. Human laws and morals need not bother you any more. You are beyond them now, so forget them and do not let them hold you back any longer.”

Hilda stared at the wolf, agog. “I don’t think it’s that easy.”

“You will learn,” the wolf promised, “if you truly wish to be like me. You will have no choice  _ but _ to learn.”

The wolf turned away from Hilda and pushed the handle down on the door, opening it. He took her trunk by the handle and rolled it in behind him as he entered the house.

Still unsure, but lacking anything else she could do and curious despite herself, Hilda followed behind him, stepping into the house.

It was, Hilda noticed immediately, essentially all just one large room rather than a house made up of individual rooms like she was used to. 

There was a fireplace in the wall directly across from the door and right in front of it was a messy pile of pillows and blankets that Hilda realized must have been the wolf’s idea of a bed. Off on the right side of the room was a stove and what looked like a cooking area with a shelf of pots and pans and other utensils near it and a small, low wooden table not far off. On the left side of the room, there was a door that led to parts unknown and in one corner, a white porcelain tub the likes of which was the kind that Hilda’s mother had often pointed to in lady’s catalogs and said she wished she could afford.

To Hilda’s surprise, more than the tub itself, was the silver tap protruding from the wall in front of it.

“You have running water here?” she asked in disbelief, hurrying over to the tub and putting her hand on the silver, relishing in the coolness of it as though she wanted to see if it was real. She had never seen such a contraption before in person, but she’d seen pictures in her mother’s periodicals and read about them in books. 

There was something like a small door handle under the tap and Hilda pushed it down before she even decided to do it, only to jerk her hand back as though burned when water began gushing from the tap. Hurriedly, she pushed the handle back up and was relieved when the water stopped. Her heart was beating faster from the surprise and she felt horribly silly and foolish for being startled by something so small.

“Yes,” the wolf said, sounding amused again. “The people who had this house built were very rich. I suppose they had no desire to take their baths in the river, though that is where the water in the well comes in from anyway. There is a sink near the stove, as well...but the water is not hot, so you will have to boil it if do not wish to bathe in the cold.”

“I’m happy to be able to bathe at all!” Hilda said honestly, then flushed when the wolf laughed. She turned to him and asked, “Why would anyone abandon a house like this? Running water is a luxury in a village like mine, only the mayor has it. Sure, this place is a bit far off, but to abandon it completely?”

“The family who owned it died,” the wolf said simply, seemingly unbothered by this proclamation while something inside of Hilda twisted uncomfortably at the knowledge that she was standing in a dead person’s home.

“All of them?” 

“There was only a husband and wife. They had no children or other family. They moved here, much like you, to get away from their village life, but humans are...frail creatures. They are unsuited to living in the forest, even if they build themselves the best dwelling man can design within it and fill it with all the luxury they can afford.”

“You talk like you knew them.”

“Knew them?” the wolf repeated, then shook his head. “Only so much as I know all the creatures that come into my forest. I saw them come and build their house and I heard them speak and then I saw them die. That is as far as I knew them.”

“And you let them build this house here?” Hilda asked. The thought of it was niggling at her,  _ bothering _ her. “You were ready to kill me just for trespassing, but you let them get away with clearing this whole swath of land and actually building something on it?”

“Who said that I let them get away with anything?” the wolf asked, tilting his head.

“But –“

“I let them build the house,” the wolf said, as easy going as ever, “because sometimes the winters in my forest are hard and I thought having a dwelling such as this would be a boon to me, but once it was complete and the workers went away, there was no reason to allow the two humans to continue to trespass any longer.”

“You --” Hilda stopped and shook her head, staring harder at the wolf. “I’m sorry – are you saying you, what, killed these people and stole their house?”

“I stole nothing from them for everything in my forest is mine,” the wolf corrected her sternly, “but yes I killed them. Of course, I did.”

Hilda stared at him harder, incredulous.

The wolf shifted on his feet and his ears swiveled backwards a little on his head which Hilda, even as non-fluent in canine earspeak as she was, knew with dogs meant that they were displeased.

“You cannot be surprised,” the wolf said, almost chidingly.

Hilda made a strangled noise. “I think I’m the only one who can be the judge of that, actually.”

And surprised only scratched the surface of what Hilda felt. Beneath that surface were other words, words like ‘horrified’ and ‘aghast’ and ‘dismayed’.

“Did you never get mice in your human home in the village you left?” the wolf pressed her. “Did you never set out traps to kill them? Or lay poison on your floors for them to eat?”

“But that’s different!” Hilda insisted. “Those are mice, they’re vermin! We’re talking about –“

“A larger, more insidious sort of vermin,” the wolf said sharply, “but vermin all the same.”

Hilda’s mouth snapped shut at those words, at the tone they were said in, not knowing how to respond to either.

The wolf sighed and said more gently, “I have told you already that the trappings of humanity no longer apply to you. After you are changed, you will not be one of them, you will be one with me and my way will become yours.”

“And your way involves killing people?” Hilda demanded.

“Only if they pose a threat to us. Only if they trespass in my – in  _ our _ forest. My way is not so much different from the human way, loath as I am to say it, for would a human not take offense to someone who had broken into their home? Would they not kill a trespasser to protect what is theirs?”

Hilda could not deny that. She knew her father kept a sword by his bed in case of that very scenario and she knew he certainly didn’t mean to do anything good to any would be intruders with it should any of them try to break in.

It occurred to Hilda to tell the wolf that it was different for the forest was not his home, but she dismissed the thought as soon as it came because she knew it wasn’t true. The forest – the whole of it, not just this house in it – was the wolf’s home and it was Hilda’s as well now, too. 

She tried to think of how she would feel, then, if some people from her old village randomly showed up and started building a house in it.

Hilda decided she didn’t like the thought.

She didn’t think she’d be angry enough to  _ kill _ them, but….but she would be unhappy about it, at least.

The wolf, apparently taking Hilda’s silence for an agreement to his way of thinking, made a satisfied noise.

“Humans are a lesser species than wolves are,” the wolf said, taking on the tone of a soothing teacher. “They are for us to treat like vermin invading our territory or, sometimes, as toys to be played with and then put away when we are bored, but they are not our family or our friends. They are beneath us and when you are changed, you will realize just how superior it feels to be a wolf rather than a weak human like them.”

“And when will that be?” Hilda asked suddenly. She swallowed hard at the wolf’s words, at the same time both repulsed by them and attracted to the strength he promised her, the superiority, the sense of being something other and better for it. Hilda had never been better than anyone else before, not at anything, and the thought that she could be now...despite herself, she found herself drawn to the idea of it. “I mean, when will you change me? We’ve been here for awhile and, well, you haven’t even mentioned doing it yet.”

“You are eager,” the wolf said, sounding at once amused and approving. “That is good, that will make it all the sweeter for us both when the time comes, but we have some time yet. The ritual to make a new wolf can only be done on the full moon and we are some weeks away yet.”

“Oh,” Hilda said, not knowing whether to be disappointed or relieved. She thought she felt more disappointed than anything, really. “Oh...will it – will it hurt, when you do it?”

Hilda thought about his teeth then, about how it might hurt to have those sharp things biting into her.

The wolf made a noise that sounded like a stifled laugh. “It will not hurt you at all, young Hilda. The changing ritual is usually quite pleasurable for the one being changed and the wolf changing them.”

“Oh,” Hilda said again, definitely more relieved this time. Then she noticed the close way the wolf was looking at her, the  _ hungry _ way, and she felt her face burning with heat at all his look implied. “Oh!”

The wolf laughed again, not bothering to hold it in. “I will tell you all about it...soon. For now, the day has been long and the night is just starting. Light the lanterns and unpack your things. I will go find us a deer to eat before it gets dark.”

And so, Hilda did as he said, and unpacked her trunk, finding a place to put all of her things in the little house and thereby slowly making it her own as wellas his. 

That night, when the wolf brought home the deer meat, Hilda cooked hers on the stove that clearly hadn’t been used in years while he ate his raw in front of the fire and she told herself to get used to seeing it for she would probably be able to stomach raw meat herself when she was a wolf, too, that she might come to crave it, even.

And when they were done eating and had washed up, Hilda hesitantly climbed into the wolf’s covers with him, with her own quilt that her mother made her now added to the pile, and only tensed for a moment when he wrapped his thick, fur-covered arms around her and buried his cold, wet snout against her neck, breathing in deeply the scent of her skin and hair.

Surprisingly, Hilda fell asleep easily and stayed asleep all through the night.

Her first night in the wolf’s house was a calm one, then, and as far as Hilda was concerned, one of the best nights of her life. She was only too happy when the nights after the first one were just as happy, when she slept just as peacefully.

Hilda felt content with the choice she had made, and she could not wait until she was a wolf herself, finally, so that she could enjoy it to its fullest extent.

*

The days passed in a daze that was somehow both as quick as sand pouring out of an hourglass and as slow as molasses dripping from a jar.

Hilda was quite happy with her new life as it was very much like her old life, except that now she had no mother to do chores for and no father who might hit her if she refused and she had no need to worry about rushing home at the end of the day for the whole forest was her home now and the house she had in it was not one she dreaded going back to.

Hilda hunted and fished like she always did, and she found new trees that she might sit under where she would read or carve or sleep. She’d asked the wolf if she might start that garden she wanted by the house and he agreed, and so she used a hoe she found in a tool shed behind the house to clear a plot, though it was still too early to plant anything, and she’d even started collecting branches of a similar size with the idea that she might use them to put a fence around their house and the clearing it sat on. Not for privacy, really, but just for the look of it. Hilda wondered if there might be some way to get her hands on some white paint, for she’d love to paint the fence once it was up if she could.

And, among all of this, Hilda also found a new source of enjoyment in the porcelain bath in the corner of the house and the running water that poured into it.

Back in the village, bathing involved boiling a pot of water on the stove, then both soaping up and washing off with cloths that were dipped into it. It was a messy process and not one that ever left Hilda feeling truly clean, for the whole family had to share the same pot of water and there was a rush for everyone to get done as quickly as possible so that it might still be warm for all of them.

The ability to just turn on a tap and have water flow into a large tub that she could then submerge herself in and truly, completely scrub herself down in for as long as she liked was intoxicating to Hilda. She didn’t even mind that the water was always cold, managing to get used to it quickly for the sake of being clean.

Hilda got used to the wolf being around when she bathed and watching her do it, too.

The wolf, Hilda quickly learned, was not one who put much stock in human notions of propriety or even manners. He’d already told her as much, of course, but it was one thing for him to say it and another for Hilda to have the proof of it looking at her with curiosity as she sat in the tub and rubbed soap against her bare breasts and the space around them.

Hilda had felt embarrassed about it at first, flushing with heat and trying to hide herself beneath the water to wash, but it was hard to maintain those feelings when the wolf acted like there was nothing odd about her being naked in front him, when he acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Humans worry too much about their bodies,” the wolf told her once while she surreptitiously tried to wash herself between the legs without drawing attention to what she was doing. “Do the deer worry that their bottoms show when they run? Do cats shy away from voyeurs when they mount each other in the street? Only humans think their bodies and what those bodies do are dirty things meant to be hidden from others and that some great law is being broken when anyone sees a bare breast or what lays between their thighs.”

“You clearly don’t have any such problem,” Hilda noted above the sound of water splashing.

The wolf blinked and looked down at himself where he laid against the bedding, as though his own lack of clothing was new to him. He laughed then and told Hilda, “You will not, either, some day, Hilda. One day you will realize you are a wolf and not a woman and you will eschew all your human clothing and wander the forest as nude as the day you were born without a care as to who sees you do it.”

Hilda’s face burned at the suggestion. 

“I doubt I’d ever be comfortable doing that,” she said honestly.

The wolf clearly disagreed, but left her to her human sensibilities without further argument. 

The thing was, though, that Hilda was quickly becoming comfortable with all sorts of things that she never thought she’d be comfortable doing.

Letting a man – well, a wolf, but still a  _ male _ wolf with certain very masculine attributes that were close enough to what a human man might have that Hilda felt flustered at seeing them – watch her undress and bathe was part of it, but there were the nights, too. 

The nights where, without fail when Hilda got done with her day and the wolf came back from the forest where he liked to run and hunt and make sure everything was how it should be, they climbed into that makeshift bed together and got under the covers and the wolf spooned up close behind Hilda.

It was just the holding, at first, just the wolf’s strong arms wrapping around Hilda’s body and his cold nose brushing up her neck while he scented her. 

Hilda got used to it quickly and, having never been held before, she found that she actually quite liked it. He was warm and strong and his fur was soft and it was comforting, in a way, to have him holding her.

But then his paws started to wander, first straying from where they usually stayed unmoving around her waist to stroke a path from the space between her breasts down to her belly button, back and forth in a way that could almost be soothing, or rubbing circles low on her stomach. 

And then once Hilda got used to that – once she was able to feel those touches and not tense, but enjoy them and relax into them – he became bolder still, touching her nightgown covered breasts and then squeezing them with his paws until she felt the tips of his claws against her skin even through the fabric, his touch wandering past her belly button to cup her very privates and press down even there, too, until she was aching between her legs and pressing back into his touches, moaning at them, wordlessly begging him to keep going until he brought her off, to put the hard thing she felt pressing up against her ass that he rutted against her with inside of her and take her as she knew he must want to.

But the wolf never, ever let Hilda come and he never came himself. These night time touches always ended with Hilda wanting more, with wanting them to continue to no avail, and she ended up falling asleep with her cunt wet and throbbing, her mind frustrated at being so unfulfilled.

It was a little over a week of this when, one morning, something finally changed – though perhaps not how Hilda wished it might during those nights when all she wanted to do was reach her peak from the wolf’s rough handling of her.

“You will come with me today,” the wolf told her after she’d dressed, just as she’d headed towards her bow thinking she might snag a deer for dinner. “I have something to show you.”

“Oh?” Hilda asked, surprised, for the wolf had never asked her to come with him when he left into the forest before. “What is it?”

“It has to do with the changing ritual,” the wolf told her, his ears twitching excitedly on his head. “Bring water with you. It will be something of a walk.”

The wolf, as it turned out, wasn’t exaggerating.

They headed westward into the woods and walked for what seemed like a lifetime to Hilda. 

She was an active girl and certainly no slouch, but even her legs had begun aching after walking for so long. Hilda had so far refrained from asking whether they were there yet, wherever  _ there _ was, because she didn’t want to annoy the wolf but even she had her breaking points.

“Are we close?” she finally asked, hoping desperately the answer was yes.

Hilda’s hopes were answered.

“Yes,” the wolf said, and Hilda could have swooned in relief to hear it. They walked only a few more minutes before the wolf’s arm flew out in front of Hilda, bringing her to a sudden stop. “Here, Hilda. Look. What do you see?”

Hilda wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked. 

At first, Hilda thought that all she saw was trees and she was about to say as much before she looked even further, through the gaps in the trees in front of her and to what clearly laid beyond. She blinked, somewhat surprised, for what she saw was clearly – 

“It’s a road,” Hilda said, then reconsidered, “Well, a path, really. It doesn’t look big enough for a wagon to go over.”

“Only one person uses it,” the wolf told her, his ears doing that excited twitching again. “It leads away from a village no more remarkable than the one you left and towards an old woman’s house at the very end. Her granddaughter brings her dinner in a basket every day.”

That was all very kind and lovely, but – 

“What does this have to do with you changing me?” Hilda asked.

“We will wait for the girl to go by,” the wolf said, decisively, “and then I will tell you everything.”

Which still made no sense at all to Hilda, but she knew already that the wolf was stubborn and so she sighed and stood there in the woods waiting.

And waiting and waiting and  _ waiting _ .

Much like the walking to get to this spot of the forest, watching the road also seemed to take up a significant portion of Hilda’s life that she would never get back. She was fairly bored and thinking of complaining when finally the wolf’s arms wrapped around her from behind and he pulled her flush against the fur of his body.

Hilda arched against the wolf on instinct, a small sound coming out of her throat that the wolf quelled quickly with a paw pressed tight against her mouth, blocking out whatever other noises she might make or questions she might ask.

The wolf’s heat soaked into her and the feel of his fur against the bare skin it touched felt horrifyingly alluring.

“Hush, child,” the wolf rasped into Hilda’s ear, though already Hilda could feel his hard cock pressing into from her behind and knew he was not unaffected by their position, either. “If you want to be a wolf, you must watch the road and wait.”

And so Hilda, because she wanted to be a wolf and despite the fact that she desperately ached to do something much more exhilarating than watching an empty road that could hardly be called a road at all, did what the wolf said.

She watched the road.

She waited.

And soon enough, the road was no longer empty at all, for now coming along it at her own sedate pace was the girl the wolf must have been telling her about. The girl with the basket full of food for her grandmother who lived at the end of the path. 

The girl who, honestly, was the most beautiful thing Hilda had ever seen in her life.

The girl’s hair was long and full of curls in a shade of orange-red the color of fire, the likes of which Hilda had heard some people had but had never seen before with her own eyes. Her skin looked soft even from a distance, as soft as a peach and like it would bruise just as easily, but what little of it Hilda could see was without any sort of bruises or imperfections to speak of. The girl’s mouth was a red rosebud, her cheekbones as sharp as though they were carved by a sculptor, and her ass – which Hilda looked at as the girl walked past their hiding spot – reminded Hilda of a peach as much as her skin did, though for entirely different reasons.

Hilda was in such a daze as the girl disappeared down the winding path that she didn’t even notice that the wolf had taken his paw off her mouth until he asked her, “Well? What do you think?”

Hilda thought quite a lot of things. She thought she might like to leave the forest to chase the girl down that sorry excuse for a road and ask for her name. She thought of the wolf’s hard cock still pressed against her and how her cunt ached more now than ever and how she’d really like the former to get inside the latter for once. 

And then Hilda thought about the girl again – the girl, the girl, the girl – for the girl was lovely and looked so sweet and Hilda quite wanted to sink her teeth into her even though she wasn’t even yet a wolf, but the girl was also the whole point of them being here, and yet Hilda didn’t understand why.

“What does this have to do with you changing me?” she asked the question again.

The wolf rocked his hips against Hilda, driving his cock further against her, and as she gasped, he asked a question of his own, “Why do you think I haven’t fucked you yet, Hilda?”

“I don’t know, I –“ 

Hilda struggled to come up with a reason. 

She’d thought to herself sometimes before that the wolf was working her up to it the way he’d worked her up to him groping her breasts or fondling her cunt through her nightgown, but truly, that was only a  _ guess,  _ and it didn’t hold up when Hilda knew that there was little more readying she needed before she was ready to be fucked.

Hilda had all but been begging the wolf for his cock by now, after all, and still he would not give it to her no matter how hard she pleaded for it.

And still, Hilda had no idea what this had to do with the girl.

“I don’t know,” she said again, more confidently – or as confidently as an  _ I don’t know _ could be. “I don’t know – so  _ tell _ me.”

And so the wolf did.

“My kind might play with humans and then discard them later, but we have another use for fucking them other than just our own fun,” he told her, still pressed to Hilda from behind, “and that use is to change another human into a wolf.” 

Hilda processed that, then processed it again, and still – “I don’t understand.”

The wolf laughed into her ear and Hilda shivered at the feel of his hot breath against her skin. 

“You would not,” the wolf told her, though not unkindly, “for it is not a thing humans are meant to understand unless there is reason for them to be told, but there is a reason for you to know now for I plan to make you a wolf myself and so you will understand, if you listen. When a wolf wants to create another wolf, they must have the human they want to change drink the very life force of them on the day of a full moon when that life force is the strongest, but there is – as you called it that day you accepted my offer to live in my forest – a catch.”

“Of course there is,” Hilda muttered.

The wolf snuffled against her ear and tightened his arms around her, but didn’t reprimand her for interrupting.

“The catch, in this case, is not such a bad one – for us, at least. You see, the wolf’s life force must be poured directly from the wolf into a vessel for the human who might be changed to drink from it, but you cannot just use any old cup or dish for this purpose. The vessel must be pure, made of untouched flesh, and the blood of the vessel – a sacrifice made when the wolf spills their life force – must mix with the that life force in order for the change to happen when the human drinks it. If the vessel is not right, then a human may drink from it until it is empty and yet they will not change.” 

“And,” Hilda started tentatively, “when you say life force, do you mean...your blood?”

“No,” the wolf said succinctly, an amused lilt in the word. He rutted his cock pointedly against Hilda’s ass and said, “Not  _ blood _ .”

“ _ Oh _ . And….and the vessel…?”

“The girl, of course,” the wolf said, and yes, he sounded  _ very _ amused now. “The ritual requires the use of a virgin and the girl is one, ripe for the using.”

“And you’re going to fuck your… your  _ life force _ into her, so –“

“So that you might drink it out?  _ Yes _ ,” the wolf said, nearly growling the last word, as his arms tightened around Hilda even more. “You like her, do you not? You find her to be a suitable vessel for our purposes?”

Hilda swallowed hard. 

Did she  _ like _ the girl? Did she find her  _ suitable _ ?

Hilda didn’t know her, really, except that she was beautiful and apparently kind to her grandmother and had skin that looked like it would bruise prettily if anyone so much as looked at it the wrong way. 

She thought suddenly of the wolf being the one bruising that skin, of what it would be like to see the wolf’s thick cock go into that girl like Hilda had been wanting it to go into her, of watching the girl struggle and whine as it was forced in to her over and over again until he came inside of her and Hilda licked his come out.

Hilda moaned lightly, feeling a pulse between her legs at those thoughts, and the wolf laughed breathlessly in her ear.

“I am so glad to have chosen her for you, then,” the wolf said, sounding incredibly pleased.

It was hard for Hilda to  _ think _ now, to really think, with the wolf against her and all the other thoughts rushing bright and vivid and pornographic in her head, but still she managed to make a small noise of discontent and ask, rather shakily, “W-wait, wait – but what happens after?”

“After? You become a wolf after.”

“No,” Hilda said, shaking her head. “No, not to me. To the girl. We’re not going to –“ and Hilda’s face scrunched up at the thought of it “-- kill her, are we?”

“Do you want to kill her?” the wolf asked, curious and entirely non-judgmental, as though it was up to Hilda whether the girl would die or not and he didn’t care either way. 

“No!” Hilda denied quickly. “No, I don’t want to  _ kill _ her, but – well, what do we do with her? What do – what do wolves usually do with their, their  _ vessels _ after they’re done with them?”

“Some  _ do _ kill them and eat them – ”

“We’re  _ not _ doing that!”

“ – and others keep them as pets until they grow bored and decide to kill them later. Humans will not turn just from being fucked by a wolf, and once they have been fucked they can never go through the ritual to be turned themselves, but if they are given the life force often, they begin to age as slowly as wolves do.”

“So...she’ll look like that forever, is what you’re saying?”

The wolf made a noise that was both amused and dismissive. “Yes, if we have her frequently and do nothing to damage her appearance ourselves, but you should not expect to want to keep her for so long, Hilda. She is pretty now and may stay pretty for years yet, but humans grow... _ boring _ when kept for too long. Their spirits break easily and you will not like her so much if all she does is lay there without making a noise or reacting to what you do to her. Such a toy is about as entertaining as a plain wooden stick.”

Hilda breathed deeply and listened to the sound of the wolf breathing behind her, focused on the feeling of the bands of his arms holding her tight. She licked her lips which felt dry all of a sudden and said, hesitantly, “You say that like you have experience with it.”

“The vessel my elder wolf used to turn me was much like the girl,” the wolf said, almost wistfully. “He was a boy, but just as pretty, and he cried and whined and writhed on our cocks for the longest time. We fucked him in every way you can fuck a boy and we taught him to please us as well as any whore could, but eventually he stopped crying about it. He stopped even reacting to it when we tried to make him like it. He got up when we told him to and ate when we gave him food and slept when we put him to bed, and when we fucked him he let us put him into whatever position we wanted no matter how uncomfortable it was, like he was little more than a doll and he did not even feel the strain in his own muscles. He was still alive, you see, and he went through the motions of life but he acted as though he was completely dead. Fucking him lost his appeal at that point.”

Hilda’s throat was tight, her stomach turning with nausea at both what the wolf said and the casual way he said it. 

He wasn’t human, she reminded herself. He’d told her that human morals meant nothing to him. She should not be surprised at anything he said, but still.

She thought she might be sick.

“And...what did you do with him? What happened to him?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. She did not  _ want _ to know it, but she still knew.

“Oh,” the wolf said, like he was only just remembering. “We killed him in his sleep one night. We thought it would be kinder to do it that way, though he likely would not have objected if we did it when he was awake.”

_ Kinder _ , he said –  _ god! _

Hilda shut her eyes tightly and focused on her breathing. A deep breath in, a deep breath out. She willed her nausea to subside, the tightness in her throat to go away.

The wolf ran his nose along her neck and Hilda shivered, squirming in his arms but making no effort to get out of them.

“Do you realize that I am not human now?” he asked her softly. “Do you truly understand? Do you understand that I did such things to that boy even younger than you are, whose name I do not even remember, and much more like it to other humans over the years and that I feel not a sliver of guilt over any of it? Do you understand those humans I did those things to, they are of no more consequence to me than the deer you eat or the spiders you crush under your booted feet are to you? That they are just my food or my prey or my play things to discard when they are no longer entertaining, worth less to me than the dirt on the ground?”

“Yes,” Hilda choked out, and then could not force herself to say anything more.

“And do you still want to be like me, then, Hilda? Do you still want to be a wolf as I am, to call my forest your home as I do, to live for longer than any human can ever dream of? Do you –“ and the wolf’s voice lowered at this, going thick and heavy with desire “ – want to watch me fuck that girl, to fuck my cock into her while she sobs for me to stop until I knot her like a bitch and spill myself inside of her for you to drink from? Do you want us to take her home afterwards so that we might keep her like a pet and put her to whatever use we might think of for her, together?”

Hilda could not breathe, she thought, but yet she knew she must have been breathing for she could hear her own breath coming out quick and fast in the forest air.

She should say no, she knew. 

A good person would say no. 

A good person would tell the wolf to kill them then and there rather than to leave their humanity behind so completely.

A good person’s thighs would not clench at hearing his words about what they might do with the girl.

A good person’s cunt would not ache with the need to have the wolf’s cock buried in it at the thought of having the girl at their mercy, the girl crying for them to stop and struggling as she took the wolf’s cock herself because she couldn’t handle the size of it in her virgin hole without pain.

A good person would  _ not _ push her ass back into the wolf’s hard cock and moan with need at how aroused those thoughts made her, arching up into the wolf’s touch when his paws moved to grasp her breasts and play with her cunt through the fabric of her dress, sobbing when he brought her close to the edge of orgasm again and again without ever letting her come.

Hilda was not such a good person, then, but that was fine.

Soon enough, she wouldn’t be a person at all. 

She’d be a wolf.

And Hilda was learning that being good wasn’t a quality wolves aspired to call one of their own.

*

The last two weeks between the first time Hilda saw the girl – Red, the wolf told her one night, her name was  _ Red _ – and the full moon were their own special brand of torture.

Hilda was anxious constantly, day and night. 

A part of her wanted to be able to lie and say that it was her conscience that made her so nervous, that she doubted what she planned to participate in on the full moon and what she would do after, that she felt guilt for even considering it and that she second-guessed all of it already – but, of course, none of that was true.

If Hilda felt guilty for anything, it was for the lack of guilt she felt, and her anxiety had more to do with anticipation than that.

Her encounters with the wolf had not changed much since that day by the road. The only difference now was that there was an edge of desperation to their movements that wasn’t there before, a need to see things through beyond just heavy petting, an ache in both of them so fierce that Hilda didn’t know how she was surviving it.

“A human that has been had by a wolf is tainted by their life force, Hilda,” the wolf told her one night, as he rubbed her back soothingly while she literally sobbed into her pillow in frustration from having been edged on and off of the verge of orgasm for hours and still had not been allowed to come. “For the changing ritual to work, you must take the life force for the first time on the right night and from the right vessel. If I have you before the ritual is complete, it will never work.”

“You don’t  _ have _ to fuck me,” Hilda cried. “You can just let me –“

“No,” the wolf said, cutting her off. “It is too much of a risk. You will have your pleasure after you are changed and not a second before, and I will not fuck you until it is done.”

There was no changing the wolf’s mind and Hilda, who wanted to be a wolf, could not find it in herself to truly try to insist.

The nights passed like that, and the days – 

Hilda still did the same things she always did, but her mind was not truly on any of it.

Her arrows missed more often when she hunted and she caught fewer fish, the latter sometimes because she would sit by the brook for a long time without getting a bite and only then realize she had never cast her line to begin with. When she read her books, she stayed on the same page for hours at a time, reading the same line over and over again and yet not understanding what it said. Her carvings, usually so intricate, had been reduced to the form of sharpened stakes, and this was about the only worthwhile thing she did those weeks.

Hilda’s fence, at least, would get done even if nothing else did. 

By the time the day of the full moon finally arrived, Hilda felt like she had aged a hundred years, but she woke up that morning feeling brighter than she had in weeks, almost like she’d smoked some illicit substance like she heard some people did and it had sent her very being into a frenzy. 

“ _ Today! _ ” she told the wolf, giddily. “It is today, isn’t it? We don’t have to wait until nightfall? You’re sure?”

The wolf huffed at her excitement, but his ears were twitching in a way that Hilda knew by now meant he was quite excited himself. 

“The moon is already full even if we cannot see it in the sky yet,” the wolf said. “I can feel it and you will, too, after you turn. We will do this today just as we discussed.”

And discuss it, they had. 

The wolf’s plan was a simple one: first, he would go to the grandmother’s house early on to make sure the grandmother was out of the way. 

Hilda didn’t ask about how he planned to do this and he didn’t elaborate, but Hilda’s gut told her that she already knew. 

There was still a part of her – a part that the wolf would call too human – that balked at the idea of killing someone,  _ anyone _ , even an old woman who had lived for years past her prime, and as cowardly as it may have been, Hilda felt better if she just didn’t think of what would happen to Red’s grandmother at all. If she just pretended the woman would disappear into the ether as easily as fog faded away as the sun got higher in the sky and that was all there was to it.

Perhaps the wolf sensed this and that was why he didn’t give Hilda any details about the woman’s fate. 

Perhaps he even worried that if he said what he would do to her aloud, Hilda might get squeamish and change her mind about all of this, though it was quite too late for that now.

Whatever his motivation, Hilda was thankful for his discretion.

While the wolf was at the grandmother’s house, the next part involved Hilda herself. 

The girl, Red, came down the path at the same time every day. Her routine was so ritual, her pace always the same as she walked, that one could set a clock by her easily, and so as the wolf would go ahead to the house itself, Hilda would go ahead on the path to the house.

Not  _ too _ far, of course. That was the whole point. 

Hilda would come out ahead of Red on the path, but be close enough that Red could – and would – catch up with her.

She and Hilda would meet. 

Hilda would spin her some yarn about why she was going to Red’s grandmother’s house as easily as she’d told the people in her village that she was going to get married.

And if the girl were half as naive and trusting at the wolf told Hilda, then Red would accept the offer to walk there together, thinking nothing was amiss. 

If all went according to plan, they would arrive at the house side by side and Red would never suspect anything until it was far, far too late.

*

This may be a good point for you to take a pause in Hilda’s tale and rest your weary ears. 

Sit down and have a drink – no no no, not over there by the huntsman. Do you want him to notice you and start blathering on again?

Sit  _ here _ and sip whatever that is you have and think back to our Hilda as she was before she met the wolf. 

There, that’s a nice memory.

Do you remember how she wanted to build a house by the brook in the forest, big enough for just her? 

And how you – romantic that you are – thought it might be nice if she and Red would fall in love and they might live in that house together?

Well, that certainly isn’t going to happen  _ now _ , is it? 

But does it at least soothe you a little to know that Hilda is quite alright as she is? I mean, not  _ alright _ like a mother or father wants their daughter to turn out, of course, but isn’t Hilda happy? Isn’t she excited? Are you not thrilled for her? She is so looking forward to this night, you know. Would you still kill to be her?

Oh, what’s that you ask? 

But what about Red? 

Ah, Red. 

Poor, kind, beautiful Red whose grandmother is certainly not going to just up and go on a  _ holiday _ , I’ll have you know, who is walking right into the wolf’s trap, who our Hilda – yes,  _ our _ Hilda, you can’t distance yourself now when you said yourself you sympathized with her not even an hour ago! – has such nasty little thoughts about what to do with her.

Well, don’t blame  _ me _ for whatever happens to the girl! 

Didn’t I tell you this wasn’t Red’s story? Isn’t the first rule of story telling that the heroes always win and is Hilda not our hero? What? What do you mean a hero and protagonist aren’t the same thing? Oh for – who  _ cares _ ? 

Red, is it? 

You want to know about Red? 

I thought you already knew all about Red. You listen to the huntsman, don’t you – no, don’t  _ look _ at him! 

Everyone knows Red’s story. 

Everyone knows how one day Red is walking merrily down the path to her grandmother’s house with a basket full of food when suddenly the wolf appears and asks Red to feed him. 

“I’m sorry to be so rude!” Red says. “But my grandmother is old and frail and really needs this bread and cheese! I don’t know how anyone can live off just bread and cheese, but grandmother is in her nineties and so I guess it must work.”

And then the wolf insists and Red apologizes, then the wolf demurs and departs, and Red continues merrily skipping to her grandmother’s house where the wolf has already swallowed the old woman down because he was actually quite hungry and donned her house coat and underthings because house coats are quite wonderful and should really make a comeback and old women’s underthings are the only ones he likes. 

Red and the wolf go through that silly song and dance where the girl somehow doesn’t recognize that the wolf is in drag as her grandmother until suddenly she does and the wolf is just about to eat her when – lo and behold! 

Through the door bursts the huntsman who saves Red and knocks out the wolf, who cuts granny out of his stomach and then fills him up with rocks and sews him back up and throws him in the river so that when the wolf wakes up, he thinks his belly is still full of a naked old woman whose clothing he stole and put on like he owned it. 

Red and her grandmother go on to live happily ever after, and if the huntsman is  _ very _ drunk when he tells this story and there are no highborn ladies around, then maybe Red even ends up sucking his cock in thanks for his heroics after. 

You know what those redheads are like, the huntsman might slur in some fellow’s ear, they’re born hungry for cock, hahaha!

The End.

...Oh, I’m sorry,  _ now _ you’re asking about Hilda? 

Where was Hilda in the huntsman’s story? 

Pardon me if I laugh if  _ that _ is the detail you’re stuck on. Sewing the wolf up with a belly full of rocks doesn’t get you but the absence of another girl does? 

Do you realize now? Are you starting to?

Hilda isn’t in Red’s story because Red’s story isn’t  _ her _ story at all, it’s the huntsman’s story, and the huntsman doesn’t know a damn thing about Hilda – or Red, either, as it so happens – much less the wolf. 

All he knows is some nonsense he made up when Red’s mother got worried that her daughter never came home and our drunken huntsman was finally roused from this here pub hours after Red should’ve been back. He was asked (and then begged and then cajoled and then finally yelled and threatened) into going down the path to Red’s grandmother’s house where he found it empty of anything but a damn mess and he then wandered out to find the grandmother herself out in the back yard. 

Dead, of course. Do you even need to ask?

She may or may not have been naked, too, who knows, as it was a little hard to tell considering she was ripped to so many shreds.

The huntsman puked everywhere (including on pieces of the grandmother’s torso, or so I’ve heard from the old baker) but eventually rallied himself enough to go back to the village and tell people what he’d found.

A search party was gathered up and they bravely marched the path and even wandered a little into the forest, too, all of them calling Red’s name, but Red never called back. Not a single orange hair from Red’s lovely head was ever found, but people could guess what might have happened to her. 

A lot of the mess in the grandmother’s home was in her bed, you see? There were quite a lot of stains, more than any single man could make. It was obvious what went on there and, certainly, no one imagined that it was the grandmother who it had happened to.

The running theory at the time had nothing to do with a wolf at all or anything out of the ordinary. No, people assumed that it was humans – perfectly disgusting, entirely violent humans, yes, but humans nonetheless. Bandits who heard that the grandmother had some fortune tucked away and went to rob her, who maybe found it or maybe didn’t, who killed her either way, and who Red unfortunately happened upon when she came by to bring her grandmother her dinner. 

The bandits raped Red, the villagers whispered to each other, because a girl like that is worth more than any fortune, isn’t she? Who wouldn’t have her if they could get away with it and no one could stop them? Why not fuck her, one after the other, when you’ve already murdered? What’s a little rape compared to that? And then once they had her, well, they couldn’t get enough, so they stole her away. Made her a whore, maybe. Sold her to whoever was willing to pay them to put their cock in her.

The huntsman’s version of events came much, much later, and the most shocking thing about it isn’t even that he managed to come up with the idea of the wolf on his own, really, considering he’d never actually seen the wolf that actually existed.

No, the most shocking thing is that people  _ believe _ him. 

No one back  _ then _ did, of course, because it’s hard to say Red and her grandmother got a happy ending with a straight face to people who picked up the pieces of her grandmother to collect them for burial and everyone saw Red’s mother at the graveyard burying an empty casket for Red with an oddly calm, almost happy look on her face and then heard about all the commotion when the poor woman hanged herself that same day, as soon as she got home. 

And, of course, people back then found the bandit story much more titillating. A talking wolf who wore an old woman’s clothes? Please! Only a child would be entertained by that!

But then a lot of the people who actually knew Red and her family got older and died themselves or they were so horrified about what they knew happened and what they assumed happened both that they moved away. Young people in the village grew up not knowing the truth for no one who was old enough to know would speak it and new people moved in who never had a chance of knowing the truth at all.

And somehow, in all of that, the huntsman came up with his story that painted him as a dashing hero and people believed it. 

Lovely Red Riding Hood, they said for miles around! She survived the big bad wolf and went on to live a happy, holy life! She married a prince and had him a dozen sons and she stayed young and beautiful forever! 

Well, one part of that is true. Red  _ did _ stay young and beautiful for long enough that humans might call it forever.

But oh, here I am skipping ahead again. I’ve always been bad about that.

This isn’t Red’s story anyway, we need to get back to Hilda.

But – 

Before we do that, please, just do me one favor? 

Take a good, long look at the huntsman now while he’s passed out and he won’t take your eye contact as an invitation. Look at him and how old and weak he is. Imagine him about fifty years younger, a little more hair on his head and a little less bulge in his belly, but still just as drunk and as weak as he is right now. 

Tell me something – do you think that man could have really rescued Red and her grandmother?

Come, now. Be honest.

Look at him.

Yes, that’s what I thought. 

That poor bastard could never even rescue himself.

*

Hilda’s anticipation was so great that she didn’t even mind the walk westward through the forest very much, though it left her feeling just as exerted as the last time she made the trek.

She finally came out of the forest and onto the path with a happy, breathy little laugh of relief, smoothing down her dress and tucking her hair behind her ears and wiping the sweat from her face. She hoped she didn’t  _ look _ as though she’d been wandering in the forest for a long while when Red caught up to her.

It was a silly hope, Hilda knew, for it wasn’t like she was going to court Red. 

Nothing she wanted with Red was anything like courting.

But still, Hilda hoped to make a...a not  _ bad _ impression. That would come soon enough, after all, but she would like it more if the walk to Red’s grandmother’s house was not an awkward or uncomfortable one. If she could just know what Red was like on an average day, how she sounded when she was happy, what her smile might look like.

Hilda had no illusions that Red would be happy about what she and the wolf had planned for her, but some part of her wanted to see what the girl was like when she  _ was _ happy if even it was only once. 

Hilda took a deep breath and drank some water from the skin she brought with her, then poured some of it in her hand to splash on her face. She stood there, letting her body relax for a few a minutes, and only when she was sure it had been long enough did she start walking up the path, her pace slow but not suspiciously so, not like she was dawdling. 

Just like she was a young girl in no real hurry, who was happy enough to enjoy the warm spring day, which was as close to the truth as anything.

Hilda walked for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before she heard the sound of footsteps a little ways behind her, and she bit down on her bottom lip to stifle her smile, though there was nothing that could be done about the sudden uptick of her heartbeat.

Hilda schooled her expression and slowed her step, tilting her head as though listening to something behind her. 

Red’s footsteps continued, but they had slowed, too – tentative now, curious, but not afraid – and Hilda knew then that Red could see her.

Hilda stopped walking and suddenly spun around.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, her hand shooting up to cover her mouth and her eyes going wide. 

Hilda’s surprise wasn’t even entirely faked for Red, who had looked so beautiful when Hilda spied on her through the trees, was even more gorgeous now that she was closer. Her red curls shined like burnished gold and her eyes were of a sparkling shade of green like the rarest of gems, and her skin – her soft, lovely, bruiseable skin – looked even more delicate, like it was crafted for the express purpose of being squeezed and clawed and tongued until its every inch was marked at someone else’s hands.

Hilda’s whole body ached with want just to look at her, with the desire to tear off the girl’s dress and see the luscious skin beneath.

“Hello!” Red called out, smiling pleasantly at Hilda as she closed the distance between them, and her voice – like all the rest of her – was perfect. Light and sweet and airy, what every boy thought a beautiful girl’s voice should be. 

Hilda felt aroused when she thought of how lovelier that voice would sound when the girl cried.

“Hello,” Hilda said back, swallowing past her dry mouth. She smiled back at Red when the girl stopped in front of her just a few feet away, the smell of her flowery perfume invading Hilda’s nose like little ghosting fingers trailing up her skin, and said, “You startled me! I didn’t think anyone else would be on this path.”

“I’m sorry,” Red apologized immediately, sounding entirely genuine. “I didn’t mean to startle you! No one else but me usually comes down here. My grandmother lives at the end, see, and I take her dinner every day. My name is Red. I haven’t seen you in the village before, have I?”

“I’m Hilda and no,” Hilda shook her head. “I don’t think you would have. I live in the next village over and I came here to run some errands for my family. My mother couldn’t come with me, but she asked me to look in on an old teacher of hers who she said lives down a path going through the woods. This...this  _ is _ the right path, isn’t it? Oh, I’d hate it if I’ve been walking all the way down here and it’s not even the right road!

“No!” Red exclaimed in surprise. She smiled broadly and laughed with apparent delight. “I can’t believe it! My grandmother was a teacher years ago! Your mother must have wanted you to come see her!”

Hilda faked a great sigh of relief. “Oh, I’m so glad. I would have hated to get lost in a forest like this!”

“You won’t get lost as long as you stay on the path,” Red insisted. She offered happily, without hesitation, “You can walk with me! We’re going to the same place, after all, and – oh, I know! You can stay for dinner with us and I’ll walk you back to the village after.”

“You’re so kind,” Hilda said sweetly, “but I wouldn’t want to impose myself on you.“

Red reached forward and placed her hand on Hilda’s arm, and Hilda froze for a second at the feeling of that silken skin against her. 

“You’re not imposing yourself at all,” Red said, heartfelt, then let her hand drop. Hilda felt bereft at its absence. “I’m insisting on it. Grandmother will be so excited to see a new face, usually all she gets to see is mine.”

“But you’re beautiful,” Hilda couldn’t stop herself from saying. “I doubt she minds it.”

Red flushed, pink as a berry, at that, looking down shyly as though no one had ever called her beautiful before.

“You’re sweet to say so, Hilda,” Red said, biting into that rosebud lip of hers. She glanced up at Hilda from under her lashes and her smile broadened. She giggled like the carefree girl she was and said, “Come on, now! The sooner we get to my grandmother’s house, the sooner we get to eat!”

And so Hilda and Red both started walking the path again, this time together, side by side.

It didn’t take long for Hilda to get the full measure of Red for the girl was as open as book – and a rather simple one at that – and quite talkative now that she had someone with her who she might talk to.

Red wasn’t stupid, no, that wasn’t it. 

The girl displayed a sweet sort of wit at times that made Hilda laugh genuinely, often surprised for it, and she knew plenty that Hilda didn’t, like how she could point to every plant growing along the path’s edges and tell Hilda easily what the thing was and what remedies it might be used for and how to make them. 

But it became clear to Hilda quickly that while Red had some intelligence to her, she was also entirely naive in the ways that mattered.

“Aren’t you ever afraid walking through these woods?” Hilda asked her as they made their way ever closer to their destination. 

“No, of course not,” Red said, like the thought of being afraid would never occur to her. “My mother told me that if I stay on the path then nothing bad will happen and there will be nothing to be afraid of.”

“And you believe her?” Hilda couldn’t help but ask, privately thinking Red’s mother was a fool.

Red blinked at Hilda, confused-like. “Of course I do. Don’t you believe everything your mother tells you?”

Hilda laughed aloud at the very notion, and then realized that Red wasn’t joking. She rushed to explain, so Red would not think Hilda was laughing at  _ her _ , “Yes, you’re right. I don’t know why I asked. I suppose I’m just a little nervous here myself, as I don’t know the area like you do, but if you say the path is safe then of course it must be.”

Red smiled brightly at Hilda’s explanation, accepting it at face value, and quickly went to chatter on about something else.

Such was the way of Red, Hilda figured.

She was too trusting for her own good, probably too sheltered by her mother in that little village and uneducated in the ways of the world because of it, entirely too willing to just assume that what people told her was true, too willing to see everyone as  _ good _ . 

The idea that Hilda, or anyone, might have bad intentions – or any intentions, for that matter, other than what they said their intentions were – towards her would be as alien to Red as the idea that the sky might suddenly fall down upon her head would be.

It was a wonder, Hilda thought with some amazement, that nothing had happened to Red before now. 

The girl was a rare beauty and if Hilda felt the desires she did when she looked at Red, then surely others who looked at her did, too.

It would take nothing, Hilda thought, for some man in Red’s village to talk the girl into his home, to even get her all the way to his bedroom. He might have his cock in her before she finally realized that he’d lied to get her there and even then, she would be more confused than anything. 

She wouldn’t understand that he’d lied or why, she might not even understand what sex was if she were as sheltered as Hilda thought.

That nothing of the sort had ever happened – that Red was still a virgin as she walked next to Hilda, as the wolf swore he could tell she was – was nothing short of an anomaly. 

A miracle, even. 

The men in her village, and some of the women even, had to be saints to have refrained from splitting the girl open on their cocks and fingers and making her writhe between them the second they could lure her some place where her mother wasn’t around to stop them.

If Red had showed up in  _ Hilda’s _ old village one day, Hilda knew the boys her age would have gotten her carted off to the woods and had her passed around them like a bottle of ale before anyone else could so much as notice she was there. If their mothers found them, they would be horrified, of course, but their fathers would have undoubtedly joined in, showing their sons how it was done and likely getting a new sibling for them fucked into the girl’s womb in the process.

“Are you well, Hilda?” Red asked suddenly, concerned. “You look a little flushed.”

Hilda swallowed hard at the thoughts of hers that were making her feel so heated. She smiled at Red and lied, “It’s only the sun, Red. I’m perfectly fine, but thank you for asking.”

Red smiled back in relief and went back to whatever she was talking about – something about the dinner she was taking to her grandmother, family recipes – while Hilda only listened as much as she needed to make the appropriate noises and ask the right questions in response.

Red didn’t notice that Hilda’s mind was on other things, as it would never occur to Red that someone would only pretend to listen to her or not really care about what she said for Red was the sort who always listened to everyone wholeheartedly and always cared about what they had to say.

She thought everyone was just as good and noble as she was, Hilda realized. 

That was her problem described succinctly. 

Red had no bad intentions towards anyone and so she thought no one could possibly have bad intentions towards her, and because her kindness was genuine and given without motive, she assumed the same was true for everyone else. 

It could not even be called a child’s logic, that, for even children knew better, but it struck Hilda as very childish all the same.

What a foolish little girl, she thought of Red then, but without any malice, only with the sort of amusement one might feel when their cat rolled off their bed and landed on the floor.

If a part of Hilda felt guilty at all about taking advantage of Red’s naivete, then it was buried deep, the part of her that was eager to do all the things she’d thought of doing to the girl much stronger. 

Hilda rationalized it with herself a little that she wouldn’t hurt Red  _ too _ badly or let the wolf damage her permanently or – worse – kill her the way he said he did to that nameless boy Hilda didn’t like to think about too much. 

Hilda thought she might even be able to make Red enjoy what they would do to her. 

The girl was simple enough that convincing her that she actually wanted it might not be hard. She probably wouldn’t even understand what they were doing or why it was wrong, only whether it hurt or felt good or maybe it felt like a bit of both. 

And she was good-natured enough, too, so naturally trusting that if Hilda could think of a good enough lie about why she had to stay with her and the wolf and do what they said, she might believe Hilda without question the same way she believed her story about being on an errand for her mother when they met on the path.

Hilda thought about all of this, about all her plans for Red when they got to her grandmother’s house and even afterwards, as they walked, and eventually they reached their destination before Hilda had quite realized it.

“Here we are!” Red announced cheerfully, as they both came to a stop at the cottage in front of them.

It was a lovely place, larger than the house that Hilda shared with the wolf, with walls made of gumdrop shaped yellow tiles and a creamy white roof, a white door and a white shuttered window in the front, and blooming spring flowers of yellow and red and blue growing all around outside. 

“It’s very pretty,” Hilda said honestly, and felt her heartbeat quicken because she knew the wolf must already be inside and must have been able to hear their every word. “Are you sure your grandmother will be happy to have me?”

“Of course,” Red answered, smiling joyfully as she walked up to the door and Hilda followed her. “She always says she wishes she could have more company.”

They got to the door, standing right in front of it, and Red raised her fist to knock. 

_ Knock, knock _ , she did it twice, then said loudly, “It’s Red, Grandmother! I have dinner for you and a surprise!”

Red glanced at Hilda at the last part and gave her a small little wink, giggling softly.

They waited, but no one came to the door, not that Hilda much expected that the wolf would, really. 

Red didn’t quite  _ frown  _ at the lack of response, but her smile did dim down a notch and twisted a little in confusion.

She knocked again twice more and called out again through the door, “Grandmother? It’s Red! Are you there?”

Still there was no response.

“It’s strange, she’s always here when I bring her dinner,” Red said, turning to Hilda as though she might be able to enlighten her.

Hilda could, of course, but she’d rather Red be  _ in _ the house with her and the wolf first.

“Maybe she left?” Hilda suggested, seemingly thoughtful. “You said she wishes people visited her more, maybe she decided to go do some visiting herself.”

Red’s smile perked back up at that. “That does sound like something grandmother might do, but – well, how will I know?”

“Maybe she left a note for you inside,” Hilda suggested. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you going in to check. You should put her dinner away, too, in case she’s hungry when she gets back.”

Red looked thoughtfully at the shut door. Hilda felt relieved when she nodded and said, “Oh, you’re right, Hilda! I do wish grandmother might have sent word to me so that I could go with her, but well. I can’t blame her for wanting to get out of the house sometimes, I suppose. I’m happy to get out just to get the fresh air myself. Let’s go in, then. I’ll put her dinner away and see if she left word about where she got off to.”

And then Red turned the handle on the door and walked right in with Hilda following behind her.

The inside of Red’s grandmother’s house was similar to the wolf’s house in a few ways. There was a fireplace in the far wall across from the door, for example, and a kitchen area off to the right side of it. But the similarities ended there, for there was no giant tub here, but rather shelves filled with plants and balls of yarn and knitting equipment and other odds and ends, and rather than a bed area in front of the fireplace, there was only a large rug and a few comfortable looking chairs that sat upon it.

There was also a door off to the right, just  _ slightly _ cracked open, that Hilda assumed led into a bedroom for there was nowhere else the grandmother might sleep. 

And because the wolf was clearly nowhere else to be seen in the house, Hilda thought he must be in there, too, waiting, feeling anticipation as strong as that which coiled in Hilda’s chest, tightening her throat and making her palms sweat.

Red, completely ignorant to all of this, made her way to the kitchen area where she sat the basket on the table there and looked searchingly around.

“I don’t see any note,” she said, still more puzzled than suspicious. 

Hilda didn’t think Red was even capable of such a thing as suspicion in the first place.

“Maybe it’s in her bedroom?” Hilda said, glad when her voice didn’t betray her nerves.

Red turned to look at Hilda, quizzical. “The bedroom?”

“Maybe she thought you might want to rest after coming all this way and not finding her here and thought it might be easiest to find there.”

The logic sounded faulty and convoluted to even Hilda who was the one who suggested it, but Red smiled like she thought it was brilliant and said, “Good idea!” before she walked and headed past Hilda, pushing the cracked bedroom door a little further and slipping inside.

Hilda held her breath. She didn’t know what she was expecting, what she was waiting for, what – 

_ Thump! _

Hilda jumped at the noise and a startled sound escaped her throat.

She held herself very still then, breathing deeply, and was almost startled into jumping again when suddenly the wolf’s voice sounded from the bedroom.

“Hilda,” he called, his voice arriving before he did. He came out of the bedroom a second later and stood still in its doorway, his head tilted as he looked at her, the movement of his ears quite amused. “You did well getting her here.”

“Is she –“ Hilda didn’t know how to finish the question.

The wolf answered it anyway, “Only sleeping for now, and not of her own choice. It will be easier for us to begin without having her awake at first.”

“Begin?” Hilda repeated. She swallowed hard. Her mouth felt very dry all of a sudden and shivers of anticipation ran down her arms. “Then...we’re finally doing this?”

“Yes,” the wolf said, baring his sharp white teeth in an expression too beastly to be considered a smile. “We have waited long enough, haven’t we? Now let us have it done at last. Come with me, Hilda, so we can put the girl to her use and free you from your humanity for good.”

*

Hilda followed the wolf into the bedroom.

She was somehow surprised to see Red’s unconscious form on the floor even though she’d been expecting it, but however the wolf had knocked Red out, Hilda couldn’t tell. There was not so much as a bruise on Red’s face and she looked almost peaceful laying there, as though she’d fallen asleep naturally and not by force.

Hilda managed to tear her eyes away from Red to look around the bedroom itself after a few moments. 

It was not anything special, that room. 

There was nothing in it but the large bed itself with a few pillows at its headboard and what looked like an old, but well cared for, quilt on top, a small table with a lantern on it next to the bed, and a set of dresser drawers against the far wall. There was one window in the room, a small one that was high on the wall, but it was enough to let some sunlight in and therefore made lighting the lantern unnecessary. 

Nothing in the room was worth Hilda’s attention, but the wolf and Red, and so Hilda turned her attention back to them.

“What next?” she asked the wolf, while looking down at the girl. “I mean, what  _ first _ ?”

“First,” the wolf said, “she needs to be undressed. Would you like to have her on the bed or the floor?”

That wasn’t a very hard decision to make, Hilda thought.

“The bed,” she said.

The wolf huffed, amused, and proceeded to lift Red up with one arm as though she weighed nothing and tossed her onto the bed with as little care as one might give to a sack of potatoes. 

Using his claws, the wolf began to cut off Red’s clothes, shredding her dress until it was nothing more than strips of ruined fabric, revealing more and more intimate slivers of Red’s skin as he did, until the dress was off entirely and Red’s lush breasts and the pretty pink nipples on them were bare before Hilda’s eyes and all that was left on her were her shoes and stockings and the plain white underthings that hid her cunt from view. 

The wolf pulled the shoes off next, dropping them to the floor as carelessly as he dropped Red on the bed, and then he used his claws again to rip the stockings right down her legs. Only her underthings were there now, a single bit of fabric covering such a small area, but that was torn off as easily as the rest of it and finally Red was as bare as the day she was born, laying there in the middle of her own grandmother’s bed with an expression on her face like she was dreaming the sweetest of dreams.

Hilda’s cunt throbbed at the sight of her there, at her vulnerability and the fact that anything could be done to her now and she wouldn’t even know it, and also because Red’s nude body was no less perfect than Hilda expected it to be. 

Her breasts were perfect handfuls, just as her hips were, and not a blemish was anywhere on all that lovely flesh. Red’s cunt, such a pretty thing that was too, had a thatch of orange hair a shade lighter than that on her head covering it, and it looked perfectly ready to be ruined.

The wolf was no less affected by the sight than Hilda was.

Hilda could tell from the way the wolf’s cock was as hard as it had ever been, jutting up straight against his belly with white fluid leaking from the head of it down into the thick black fur along its length, as he knelt on the bed next to Red. His giant paws cupped the girl’s breasts, squeezing and massaging them roughly, and when Red made a small noise, a moan, in her sleep at the rough touch and shifted her legs a little, inadvertently spreading herself for Hilda’s eyes a little more, Hilda swore she could feel the wetness in her own cunt leaking out, dripping out of her, and she could have cried for the ache within it that desperately needed to be filled.

“Let’s do it now,” Hilda said breathlessly, and the wolf turned to look at her, his head tilted, his predator’s eyes staring. “I can’t wait any longer. Please don’t make me.”

“Eager,” was all the wolf said, sounding like he approved, and then he was moving his great paws to Red’s hips and flipping her over on her belly as easily as flipping over a sheet of paper, uncaring when Red made another soft noise in her sleep at the change of position. He picked up one of the strips of fabric that used to be part of Red’s dress and dangled it by one claw in the air. “We will tie her arms behind her back to better control her. Your hands are more suited to the task than mine.”

Hilda did not hesitate before coming over, kneeling on the bed herself and taking the fabric from the wolf. She pulled Red’s arms behind her back and, trying to ignore how her own hands shook, bound the girl by her wrists, using a knot she’d learned to make while fishing that she knew Red could never get out of. 

The wolf made an approving sound. “Good. Now get undressed yourself while I start.”

Hilda stood to take off her boots and strip off her own dress and underwear, hurrying about it and eager, all the while watching the wolf as he rearranged Red how he wanted her as though she were little more than a doll, pushing her knees up under her body and moving her until her ass was elevated in the air, her bound hands standing out against her back and the side of her face pressed to the pillow, her eyes – if they were open – facing towards the wall, that little rosebud mouth parted so slightly in her sleep.

“Can we –“ Hilda broke off to swallow, then tried again, “Can we blindfold her?”

The question had the wolf pausing in his rearranging to look at Hilda, his ears quivering on his head.

“And gag her,” Hilda added, because in for a penny, in for a pound, she guessed. She felt hot all over looking at Red as she was, but, “I think I’d like it better if she didn’t know who was doing it to her. If she couldn’t even see or ask or do anything, but just – just lay there and take it without being able to complain.”

The wolf watched Hilda for a long, long moment, and then he laughed so loudly that Hilda thought the sound might wake Red up in an instant.

It didn’t, though.

Red didn’t even twitch.

“Of course,” the wolf said, and picked up two more strips of fabric to hold out to her. “Let the bitch think she is being fucked by faceless shadows, then. We may keep her like that for a time and have our fun in revealing ourselves to her later, if you still have a mind to keep her for awhile.”

“I do,” Hilda said quickly, hurrying to take the fabric from the wolf, her cunt aching and dripping with want at the idea of having all the time in the world with Red as she liked. 

Hilda used one of the strips of fabric to wrap around Red’s eyes, tying it off being her head, and used the other as a gag. She thought to stuff the whole wad of it in Red’s mouth, but she didn’t want the girl to spit it out or choke on it, and so she ended up doing the same as she had with her eyes, putting some of the fabric in Red’s mouth and then tying it tight being her head. 

Red would be able to make noise, but that fabric would block her tongue from forming words and actually speaking, and the other fabric around her eyes would bar her sight entirely. 

Hilda looked down at her like that, bound and gagged and blindfolded, and thought that Red had likely never looked so pretty in her life. If any of the men in her village saw her like this, they would not be able to resist using her as Hilda so wanted to use her now.

As she would use her soon enough.

Hilda licked her lips and looked to the wolf. 

“Will you start?” she asked, the impatience leaking into her voice.

The wolf laughed lightly. He grasped his cock with one of his large paws and squeezed it, growling when he did, and then he moved both paws to cup Red’s ass, the furry appendages looking impossibly large and animalistic against Red’s delicate skin. 

He was kneeling on the bed and shuffled on his knees until he was close behind Red. He used his paws to spread her thighs apart as far they would go and rubbed the leaking head of his cock along the wet folds of her cunt, teasing at Red’s virgin hole with the large tip, smearing his pre-come all over her. 

“Do you want me to be sweet with her,” the wolf asked gruffly, voice thick with his own need, “or not?”

Hilda swallowed, watching his cock as it rubbed over Red’s cunt from behind again and again, teasing at the hole, pressing at it without really pushing in, just giving it the lightest of promises that it would.

“Not,” Hilda said without thinking about it. 

The wolf moaned and laughed at the same time in both approval and delight.

“Not it is, then,” he said, and then he stilled his cock against Red’s opening and gently at first, pushed the first inch of it in, Red’s virgin cunt stretching impossibly, almost tentatively, around it. 

And there the wolf stilled, breathing deep, until all his gentleness left him in an instant as he gripped Red hard by the hips and drove his cock roughly all the way in.

Red woke up in an instant at what must have been the pain of it, for suddenly a loud, muffled sound like a startled whine came out from behind her gag and her body jerked of its own accord as though seizing. 

Her cunt must have been squeezing around the wolf’s cock suddenly, too, for the wolf groaned loudly himself before he pulled nearly all the way out and then drove back into Red, fucking his cock back into her before pulling out and fucking in again, and again, and again, and all the while Red’s noises went from startled and confused to clear sounds of pain and dismay. Her body jerked and writhed under the wolf as much as it could with how he held her down so tightly by the hips, his claws digging into the meat of Red’s skin enough that rivulets of blood were dripping down from her hips to her thighs and onto the sheets.

Red struggled, but between the wolf’s strength and her bound hands, she could never get away.

And all the while Hilda watched the wolf’s cock fuck in and out of Red’s cunt breathlessly, her own cunt sopping wet and throbbing with its own emptiness and the feeling only getting worse the longer she watched. 

The wolf’s thrusts got rougher, more frantic, until finally he growled loudly and reached forward with one of his mighty paws to grip Red around the throat. He sat back on his haunches suddenly and bodily forced Red’s body back with him until she was now sitting in his lap, her back to his front, as the wolf used his grip on her throat and hip both to force her to bounce on his cock while her muffled screams got more shrill, more high pitched, the angle of his cock fucking into her now changed, making it hit her even deeper.

Hilda could see everything so much better with them in that position, too. She could see the length of the wolf’s cock entering Red and pulling out, how his balls slapped against her and the way fluid tinged pink with blood gushed out every time he fucked his way back in, how Red’s stomach seemed to almost bulge a little with that thick cock in her. She could see Red’s breasts bouncing on her chest, her pink nipples hard like ripe little berries, and all of her skin from her chest to her belly flushed pink, too, from exertion. She could even see the tears, now, that ran down Red’s face from under the blindfold as Red cried and cried and screamed and whined and tried to beg for the wolf to stop.

The wolf didn’t stop, though. The wolf didn’t seem even close to stopping. 

The wolf only continued to fuck Red, panting harshly as he did. He moved his paws to her breasts and squeezed them tightly as he thrust up into Red by the force of his hips alone, his claws digging into her breasts as he twisted her nipples meanly, something that caused Red to absolutely  _ squeal _ behind the gag. He moved one paw down to her cunt where his cock was fucking in and out of her and he squeezed her mound there, liking whatever that made Red’s cunt do to his cock for he groaned and kept squeezing her there, rhythmically. 

Hilda thought it would go on forever, but the wolf’s thrusts eventually became frantic in their speed, his breathing harsher, his growls louder, his squeezing paws rougher on Red’s skin, bruising here, clawing in deep enough to draw blood there.

And then Hilda could see, finally, the wolf’s knot forming at the base of his cock, the flesh swelling there and catching on the rim of Red’s cunt every time he fucked into her, teasing at it like the head of the wolf’s cock had teased when he first rubbed it against her, until with a final strong thrust, the wolf forced the whole of the knot into Red and finally stilled his thrusts to the most shallow of movements, more writhing than anything, holding Red down in his lap like a prisoner as her noises turned more pained, more desperate, as the knot swelled inside of her. 

Red squirmed in the wolf’s lap, desperately trying to get free, but Hilda could hear from the moans that left the wolf that her struggling only made him feel all the more pleasured. 

When finally he was knotted to her, his grip on her loosened and he brought one paw to the bulge in her belly where his cock was buried in her and pressed into it roughly, laughing exhaustedly when Red let out a choked little noise at that, as she still kept trying to struggle, though her movements were weak as that of a kitten.

The wolf met Hilda’s eyes over Red’s shoulder and he moaned, working his hips in circles as he spilled his come inside of Red, filling her full to bursting with it.

“As soon as my knot goes down,” the wolf said huskily, “you will drink my seed from this vessel and become a wolf, and when that is done, I will fuck you, too.”

Hilda could do nothing but whimper at his words, squeezing her slick thighs together where she still knelt on the bed to try to alleviate the pressure between them to no avail.

It took awhile for the wolf’s knot to go completely down. 

The wolf continued to move Red in his lap as they waited, thrusting against her as much as he was able to with them so locked together while he moaned with pleasure and spilled his come inside of her, load after load, so much that Red’s belly began to bulge from more than just his cock. 

Red, meanwhile, had gone nearly entirely limp and quiet save for the softest of pained whimpers and cries that still escaped her throat when the wolf moved against her. Her head was lolled back on the wolf’s shoulder, her beautiful face a splotchy red from crying, the tear tracks dry on her face while the gag in her mouth was so saturated with drool that it leaked out from her mouth at one side. 

Her flawless skin that Hilda had thought so bruiseable was now littered with marks from the bruising around her throat where the wolf had used his large paw to jerk her back onto his lap to the vivid red claw marks at her hips that had stopped bleeding already. 

The girl’s cunt, spread around the wolf as though he’d split her open on it, looked obscene. The sight of the black fur that ran down his cock and covered his balls between the perfectly soft, smooth human skin of her thighs alone was enough to make Hilda even more aroused, a thing that hardly seemed possible as she was so wet and throbbing already. The look of this girl – this beautiful, naive, sweet young girl – being fucked by someone who was so much like an animal was better than anything Hilda had imagined, and Hilda had imagined it frequently since the first time she saw Red.

By the time the wolf’s knot finally went down enough for his cock to slip out of Red’s cunt, causing his come to gush out of her now that nothing was holding it in, Hilda was nearly shaking, so great was her desire.

The wolf moved Red’s body down without any great effort until the back of her head was against his chest instead of his shoulder and his cock was pressed to the small of her back rather than between her legs.

“Come,” the wolf said then, putting his great black paws on Red’s thighs and spreading them open in invitation. “Come and drink from her. Drink all that you can until the change starts. You will feel it when it does.”

Hilda didn’t need to be told twice.

With shaking legs, Hilda moved forward on her knees until she knelt between Red’s spread thighs and then she lowered herself down until she could feel the heat of Red’s abused cunt against her face and she could smell the hot, heady, honey-salt scent of her, so thick in her nose that she could already taste it in the back of her throat.

Hilda’s first taste of Red was just a tentative swipe of the tongue against Red’s dark pink folds and up to her clit, tasting both Red’s own flavor and the wolf’s seed that still spilled out of her, but it was enough to make Red let out a startled sound against her gag, her thighs jerking as though she wanted to close them, but the wolf’s paws still kept her spread open, unwilling to let her get away from Hilda’s tasting mouth.

And the  _ taste _ of Red, that was like nothing Hilda had ever before had on her tongue. 

The girl tasted as she smelled, like honey and salt and skin. The wolf’s come that oozed from Red’s hole was white and thick and tasted of salt and sweat and something bitter that Hilda couldn’t name. There was also a tinge of something like iron in the taste, too, like blood. Blood, Hilda realized, that came from the injury the wolf had caused in Red when he rammed his cock into her virgin cunt.

It wasn’t an unpleasant taste and Hilda didn’t find it difficult to lean back in and taste it some more.

Her tongue lapped at Red roughly, going over her folds again and again, then going to the very center of her where it lapped at the wolf’s come as it leaked out of her cunt. When Red started moaning at Hilda’s ministrations, Hilda felt her own cunt throb in response and felt wickedly thrilled that Red was enjoying what she was doing to her. 

Hilda’s movements became rougher then, her tongue thrusting right into Red’s hole and licking around it, her mouth sucking the wolf’s come right out of Red’s core while Red’s body twitched and writhed against the wolf, moving against her will to either push closer to Hilda’s face or to get away and failing completely for the wolf still held her down by his paws, and she made noises behind her gag like she was sobbing.

Hilda drank the wolf’s come down as it leaked from Red, lapping at all of it that she could get and swallowing it convulsively, only stopping every now and then to go back up to Red’s clit and suck roughly on it, something that made Red really flinch and cry. 

Hilda knew the exact moment the change came upon her for, as the wolf promised, she could feel it happen.

As she drank the wolf’s come, Hilda could feel an energy building in her body the likes of which she had never known. She began to feel bigger than herself, her spirit suddenly too large for her body, all of her suddenly just one giant, sensitive nerve. 

The texture of the quilt beneath her body felt different at first, as though she could feel its every individual thread against her and tell how they differed with just a thought. 

Her hearing perked up next, the sound of her own heartbeat and breathing and Red’s pained/pleasured noises going up in volume and new sounds – that of other heartbeats, Red’s heart and the wolf’s, and the birds singing outside – filtered in. 

Then, even the very colors Hilda saw with her eyes changed, taking on new dimensions she could never have imagined, as she could suddenly see the most minute of details her eyes had never noticed before.

And when Hilda felt a prickling in her fingertips, she reached her hand out to place it on Red’s soft belly and saw with her own eyes how her human fingernails transformed into sharp black claws and then back again.

Hilda looked up at the wolf in surprise and found his sharp teeth bared down at her, the movement of his ears entirely pleased. 

“You are a wolf now,” the wolf crooned at her. He let go of Red, moving out from behind her and letting her back carelessly hit the bed. He moved towards Hilda and cupped her face with his big, warm paw, his eyes hot with desire as he watched her. “You can change to a full wolf now if you like, if you concentrate on it, but I would fuck you like this first before I have you any other way. Do you want that?”

“Oh,” Hilda growled, a thing her voice had never been able to do before. “ _ Yes _ .”

The wolf growled back, anticipation thick in the noise, and got behind Hilda, roughly putting her body in the same position he’d put Red in before with her knees up under her and her ass tilted high, his every touch burning Hilda and making her shudder with her need for him.

The wolf’s paws gripped Hilda’s ass and spread her open, and her cunt throbbed when she felt his cock, already hard again, pressing at her wet, aching hole.

“Do you want me to be sweet,” the wolf asked, a little amusement breaking through the clear desire in his voice, the head of his cock already pushing in, “or not?”

“ _ Not _ ,” Hilda moaned, and the wolf didn’t spare a second more before he thrust the length of himself home, burying his cock ball’s deep in Hilda’s cunt as she arched and loudly yelled, her cunt already squeezing around him, her body already moving as he pulled out and then fucked right back in. 

There was a little pain, but not so much, and Hilda’s pleasure as the wolf grabbed her by the hips and fucked her outweighed it and then some.

And so lost in that pleasure as Hilda was, moaning as the wolf moved in and out of her, his balls slapping against her ass on every thrust in, Hilda almost forgot about Red until she felt the girl moving against the hand Hilda still held against her belly. 

Hilda looked at Red, then. The girl’s blindfold still in place, still gagged, still with her hands behind her back, the flesh of her cunt dark and swollen from the abuse it had been dealt, and Hilda moaned and her own cunt clenched around the wolf’s thick cock at the sight.

With strength she hadn’t had before, Hilda grabbed Red and dragged her body closer and then spread the girl’s thighs back open with very little effort at all. Hilda lowered her face back to Red’s cunt and started lapping at it again, even rougher this time, moans coming out of her mouth and reverberating against Red’s folds as the wolf fucked her even harder and she could already feel his knot swelling and pressing against her hole.

Hilda paid attention to Red’s clit, licking it and suckling at it while the girl’s own moans renewed. Hilda removed one of her hands from Red’s thigh, throwing that leg over her shoulders, and then used the hand to finger Red, too, thrusting two into her abused cunt with ease and twisting them before adding a third, still sucking at Red’s clit all the while.

Red writhed against Hilda’s face, making muffled squeals behind her gag while new tears ran down from behind her blindfold and her cunt kept clenching and unclenching around Hilda’s fingers, her body trying to fuck down onto them as they stabbed in and out of her and twisted within her. 

Hilda knew Red was close to coming, but just as she was nearing it, the wolf gave a loud roar and his knot fucked into Hilda’s body and started to swell quickly, locking she and the wolf together. Hilda jerked her fingers out of Red and her head away as she felt the knot and felt the wolf’s come spilling into her body, crying out in surprise as her own orgasm ripped through her and she gasped for breath. 

Just as he did with Red, the wolf continued to move against Hilda even as they were knotted together, groaning and circling his hips and thrusting shallowly, every movement he made sending burst of pleasure through Hilda like she was coming over and over again, the wolf’s cock still pouring come into her, spilling more and more until Hilda’s stomach began to ache from it. 

And then the wolf moved a paw down to her cunt and began to fondle her, pressing at her folds and her clit, and Hilda cried out, thrusting her body back into his, her cunt clenching as she came again.

They stayed liked that for a time – the wolf making Hilda come and coming inside of her while all Hilda could do was writhe under him and pant for it – until the wolf’s knot began to go down. When it finally deflated all the way and the wolf’s cock slipped out of her, a gush of his come followed, spilling out of Hilda’s ass and down her thighs. 

Hilda knelt there breathing hard for a moment before tiredly, she managed to roll over onto her back and look at the wolf who looked tired himself, his fur all askew and that near his cock covered in all sorts of fluids. 

“I’m a wolf now,” she half-croaked, half-panted. 

“Yes,” the wolf said. 

Hilda held up a weak arm and looked at her human hand with its human nails, then frowned at it and concentrated until just like before, they changed to black, canine claws. She concentrate harder and fur the color of her hair grew thickly and rapidly over her fingers, only stopping when she wanted it to, and when she decided she wanted her hand to go back to normal, it did in the blink of an eye.

“I can do that,” she swallowed thickly, “all over?”

“Until the moon is no longer full, you can change into a wolf, and someday you may not need the moon at all,” the wolf said. “We will practice when we go home while this full moon still lasts. We should not linger here in case someone comes to see what became of the girl.”

“Okay,” Hilda said, still breathing heavily. She thought about getting up, but her legs felt as heavy as dead logs. “Just…give me a minute.”

The wolf laughed and stood and stretched. “Very well. You will build strength with time, with your every full moon, but I will let you recover now.”

“Mmm.”

“Do you still want to keep your pet?” the wolf asked.

Her pet? Hilda thought. 

Then she realized – 

She struggled, but she managed to push herself up on her elbows and sit up. She looked over at Red who was no longer moving or moaning, who had curled herself up into fetal position with no one holding her down. 

Hilda stretched her hearing out until she found Red’s heartbeat that was was going slow and steady. She was unconscious, apparently passed out.

“Yes,” Hilda said, still looking at Red, at the bruises that had formed on her lovely skin, and feeling a twinge of arousal in her exhausted body even now at the sight of her all over again. “I want to keep her.”

“Then we will,” the wolf said, agreeing easily, “until we get bored, then we can get another one.”

Hilda didn’t think she would get bored with Red for a very long time, if at all, and wasn’t sure if she’d ever want another one, but she said none of that.

When she finally felt strong enough to move, she used one of the tatters of Red’s destroyed dress to try to clean herself up some, and then redressed herself. 

She and the wolf left the grandmother’s house quickly after that, Red’s still nude form slung over the wolf’s shoulder as though she weighed nothing, and they made their way east through the forest to their own home.

The wolf dropped Red down onto their bedding when they got there, a place she would spend most of her time in the coming years and in the same state of undress, and then he and Hilda went out into their forest so that he might instruct her on how to shift into her full wolf form.

It was, as far as Hilda was concerned, the best possible day.

* 

Hours after Red had already been carted off from her grandmother’s house like she was little more than a sack of potatoes, a drunken Huntsman meandered up the path and found himself pounding on the grandmother’s door.

“’Lo?” the huntsman yelled, slurring the words. “Anyone home?”

When no one answered, the huntsman opened the door without hesitation and found his way inside.

“Hello!” he called, as he made his way to the kitchen where he curiously opened the basket on the table and pulled out a shiny, red apple from within it which he took a bite right out of. 

The huntsman cast his gaze about the room and saw nothing and no one, and so he made his way to and through the one other door in the house besides the front one. 

He stood over the messy bed, chewing his apple, and swallowed before he laughed and said aloud, “Well, someone’s had a right bit of fun!”

He shook his head, grinning, and since there was clearly nothing in the house of interest but a reminder that he could be having a good time at a brothel now than in this empty place, the huntsman left it and went outside. 

He was muttering curses under his breath to the people who had dragged him out of the pub to find some missing girl who wasn’t even here as he made his way to the back yard where he stumbled on something and his stolen apple flew out of his hand. 

The huntsman spun around and looked down at what he’d nearly tripped over and found himself looking at a pair of tits.

This would usually be good news for the huntsman since he’d always favored tits over (almost) every other part of a woman’s body, but he struggled to enjoy the sight of them now and where they were considering the tits in question obviously belonged to an elderly woman and said elderly woman was currently without a head and arms or any of the rest of her body to speak of underneath the tits in question.

The huntsman stared for a moment longer and then looked around elsewhere on the ground where he easily located the other pieces of the body the tits belonged to.

His eyes were drawn back to the tits.

He stared some more.

He then proceeded to vomit chunks of undigested apple and a copious amount of ale onto the body part nearest to him and did not stop vomiting until he was dry heaving and retching up little more than air.

By the time he managed to pull himself together enough to run back to the village and tell them what he’d found, Red was already miles away in Hilda and the wolf’s home, passed out on the quilt Hilda’s mother had made for her as a child, still as bound and gagged and blindfolded as she was when that ‘right bit of fun’ was being had with her in her grandmother’s bed.

When men from the village made it to the grandmother’s house and called out for Red, she was nowhere near enough to them to hear them even if she was capable of yelling for their help.

The men didn’t find Red that day or any day after.

No one in the village ever saw Red again.

*

Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just taking away your drink. 

You’ve had quite enough, don’t you think? 

You wouldn’t want to end up like the huntsman, would you?

Well, that’s the end of the story and so I guess I’ll just be – 

What? Well, yes, that is it. That’s the end. 

What do you mean I can’t end it that way? Of course I can!

...Oh, fine, you great lout. You want a realy fairy tale ending? 

Then here, how about…

*

Hilda and the wolf lived happily ever after.

The End.

*

...What about Red, you ask?

Well, what about her? I told you this wasn’t her story, why should I – 

Ow, ow – stop  _ hitting _ me!

Oh god, now the huntsman is looking at us. 

He’s coming over! 

Alright, alright – really quickly and then I’m  _ leaving _ , you bastard!

You want an ending for Red, well, here it is…

*

Hilda and the wolf lived happily ever after while Red, unfortunately, just lived.

And there never was an end for her, no matter how much Red might have wanted there to be.


End file.
